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07/09/2023

The new Law on Interchange Fees and Separate Business Rules Concerning Payment Cards, to be applied from 9 January 2024, shall regulate all issues concerning interchange fees charged when executing payment transactions and limit all fees charged when executing payment transactions.

The new legislation shall treat the issue of currently present different interchange fees for payment cards and limit the interchange fees. Payment service providers, i.e. banks, shall not be allowed to charge interchange fees of more than 0.2 % of the transaction value for any debit card transaction or more than 0.3% of the transaction value for any credit card transaction. Limiting the interchange fees amount will lead to lower merchant services, indirectly creating preconditions to decrease consumer goods or services prices.

The applicable interchange fees for debit card payment transactions in use currently range between 0.3% and 2.30%.

The new Law will also provide fee comparability, higher transparency in the bank-merchant-consumer business relation, and better consumer information. The new Law will also positively affect merchants, particularly small and medium ones. Due to lower interchange fees from January 2024, they will be able to negotiate with their banks on reducing merchant service, conditioned inter alia by the interchange fee amount.

Namely, merchant service includes mainly the interchange fee, which will now be limited to statutory, payment card scheme and other costs. Due to the new legislation, merchants will have a clear insight into the merchant service structure by the fee types it includes, thus creating conditions for negotiating with banks to decrease the merchant service fee.

It will further stimulate the use of cashless payments by small and medium-sized merchants and service providers, ultimately enabling stronger market competition and widely protecting the interests of consumers and merchants using payment cards.

The CBCG regularly analyses the trend of fees for executing payment transactions based on debit and credit payment cards. To solve problems in this area, the Council of the CBCG adopted in December 2018 the Proposal for a Law on Interchange Fees and Separate Business Rules Concerning Payment Cards, which the Parliament of Montenegro adopted in December 2021 and which implementation will start in January 2024.

Awaiting the new Law, the CBCG is also preparing a guide for merchants, which will explain the advantages of this Law in more detail. In cooperation with the Chamber of Commerce, the Union of Employers and associations, the CBCG will organise presentations for merchants and service providers and distribute materials that will clarify their rights arising from the new Law on Interbank Payments.