Contrary to the goals of banking in the country and comfort in the buying experience for users, traders would be willing to stop receiving plastic money if no measures are taken against the Commission costs they pay for the use of dataphones.

La Federación Nacional de Comerciantes (Fenalco) lanzó una alerta sobre el aumento, que oscilaría entre un 20% y un 40%, en comisiones por pagos con tarjetas crédito y débito vía datáfono.

Frente a esa situación, la Asociación Bancaria y de Entidades Financieras de Colombia (Asobancaria) apuntó que existe libre competencia en el sector financiero y que, además, la afectación no ha sido para la mayoría de los usuarios.

The decree of discord

Fenalco's call came after results obtained in a survey conducted this month in which 49% of traders responded that they had experienced increases in these commissions, 22% replied that they had not received them and 29% said they had not noticed. For their part, large format warehouses also claimed to have paid more for the service.

Thus, according to the trade union, this is due to the application of Decree 1692 of 2020 (on low value payment systems). Jaime Alberto Cabal, President of Fenalco, explained that the purpose of this rule is to stimulate the free competition of banks and providers of these services, which has proved counterproductive because the costs would be transferred to traders.

"this Commission is formally close to 2%, but depending on the size of the establishment banks negotiate, and small or medium traders find it more difficult to service. It is already becoming a recurring problem, "Cabal said.

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He added that the government is seeking to put the magnifying glass on the decree, as banks "do not want to lower prices," which would be forcing many traders to return to cash payments.

What does the bench say?

Hernando José Gómez, President of Asobancaria, said the decree made it possible to open up competition much more, a simple matter of market adjustment.

"most users have not been affected. We have 500,000 users of establishments of all kinds of commerce that allow to receive credit and debit cards in the country. In this sense, what the decree did is that there can be no compensation between the issuing bank and the acquirer (who provides the dataphone and sets the price), so the latter, in some cases, have had to renegotiate with some companies and suppliers, and that is where the free market works, "Gómez explained.

Y resaltó que los comerciantes tienen la posibilidad de considerar diversas opciones entre los 14 bancos que ofrecen este servicio y teniendo en cuenta que cada caso es particular.

In line with Asobancaria, Gustavo Leaño, President of CredibanCo, one of the intermediaries developing low-value payment systems, said Fenalco's pronouncement has been "disproportionate and baseless," as he does not sympathize with reality.

"the commissions, due to the increase in the supply of acquiring banks, from only two in 2005 to 14 today, fell between these two periods from 3.7% to 1.2% in credit cards, and from 3.7% to 1.1% in debit."