Cash Payment Fees Introduced

While selling ICICI Credit Card, the agent must have told you that the balances can be paid by Cash, Cheque, Bank Transfer etc absolutely FREE of cost. However, the same is not true any more. ICICI has introduced a whopping Rs 100 FEES for Cash Payment of Credit Cards [Plus Service Tax etc] with effective from June-1st. This is very similar to what HDFC introduced without informing its customers in December-07.

Senior RBI official is of the following view,

As per general rules, cash should be an accepted mode of payment every where. While the RBI does not regulate services charges, it examines the reasonability aspect on a case-to-case basis.

Say, if your credit card bill is mere Rs 500 and you don't hold an ICICI Bank account and hence pay the bill in CASH. If you are charged Rs 100 + taxes in your next statement, you will definitely feel ripped off.

We feel that this charge is unjustified and the Credit Card companies are simply ripping off prompt customers letting lose the defaulters who have risen to 15%.

Credit Card Interest rate hiked again

ICICI one of the worst banks to bank with, has hiked interest rates on Credit Cards yet again. We had last reported about the hike jointly announced by ICICI and ABN in August-2007The rates have now gone up from 3.15% per month to 3.40% per month i.e a whopping 49.36% per annum. ICICI Bank has 9 Million credit card holders.

What does such abnormal Credit Card Interest Rates in India mean ?
Higher Credit Card APR rates means, TROUBLE AHEAD. Stupid Credit Card companies argument for higher rates is rising list of DEFAULTERS. The rate of defaulters has doubled from 5-6% to almost 12-14%.

SBI admitted that it had accumulated loses of Rs 150 crore from its Credit Card division and has double digit NPAs as well. With rising Inflation and economy colling down, we see rainy days ahead and strongly recommend our readers to keep themselves away from Credit Card purchases unless it is an emergency or if they can pay off the bill in full every month.