To pay for services on digital channels, customers must have a bank card

From this Monday, bank customers must have a card to pay for services, payments to the government or top up mobile phones through digital channels of banks.

In December, banks informed their customers that from January 1, they will need to have a bank card linked to their account in order to be able to carry out transactions such as payments for services, government payments or mobile phone top-ups even on their digital channels (“home banking”) “).

Most customers have a bank card, but they can refuse it, while maintaining the ability to conduct transactions through digital channels of banks.

However, from this Monday, for these Multibanco transactions (for example, these are not transactions such as transfers) you will always need to have a card (debit or credit) associated with the account, which incurs costs (a debit card over a credit card costs on average approx. 20 euros per year).

This commitment comes from SIBS, the company that runs Multibanco, and has led to a dispute with the Bank of Portugal.

SIBS said it made the decision “in line with the development of European regulations and in accordance with the 2022 special decision of the Bank of Portugal for SIBS FPS.”

The Bank of Portugal said this was not the result of its direct introduction or national or European regulation, but of a decision by SIBS. The banking watchdog added that as part of the European regulation of “interchange fees applicable to card payment transactions” it had instructed SIBS to adapt to European rules, but did not specify how this should be done.

SIBS is owned by most of the main banks operating in Portugal, whose main shareholders are BCP, Caixa Geral de Depósitos, Santander Totta and BPI.