“What the APB advocates is that there should not be any kind of legislative intervention on top of those we already have, that changes and creates more constraints on the ability of banks to freely set the prices of the services they provide,” the director-general of the APB Catarina Cardoso, said in parliament at a hearing of the committee on budget and finance.
She said that the understanding of the association is that if banks are charging a cost for the service, it is because they have the legitimacy to do so because they understand that it is an underlying service that presupposes associated costs.
Cardoso noted that there are many banks that, despite having commission charges published in their price lists, also have notes on exemptions that continue to apply to certain customers, particularly in situations where the MB Way platform, the payment is originated from the apps of the banks themselves.
Previously, the president of the APB, Fernando Faria de Oliveira, in response to Socialist Party MP Carlos Brás, had already said that from the moment MB Way was launched, banks made available in their prices the commission associated with MB Way, and in most cases, a policy of exemptions was adopted, referring to operations made from the apps of the banks themselves.
The former chairman of Caixa Geral de Depósitos concluded his reasoning by saying that it is natural that a commission for the use of this service should be applicable, given its impact on banking.
Last week, Left Bloc put forward a legislative package on banking fees that suggested prohibiting the charging of fees by banks for transactions on electronic platforms operated by third parties, such as MB Way. TPN/Lusa