Study conducted by Government on credit cards

Study conducted by Government on credit cards

Reserve Bank of India (RBI), based on public feedback on its concept paper on Card Acceptance Infrastructure, has planned a pilot with reduced Merchant Discount Rate (MDR) and setting up of an Acceptance Development Fund for planned deployment of acceptance devices across various geographic and merchant locations.

The complaints pertaining to credit cards operations are mainly about issue of unsolicited cards, sale of unsolicited insurance policies and recovery of premium along with card charges, charging of annual fees in spite of being offered as ''free'' card, authorization of loans over phone, wrong billing, settlement offers conveyed telephonically, non-settlement of insurance claims after the demise of the card holder, exorbitant charges, inappropriate practices by recovery agents, wrong reporting of credit information by banks to Credit Information Companies etc.

The number of complaints about non-adherence to RBI instructions on credit cards by banks received in the offices of Banking Ombudsman is 7472 in 2014-15, 8740 in 2015-16 and 3035 is in 2016-17 (up to 31.10.2016).

This was stated by Shri Santosh Kumar Gangwar, Minister of State in the Ministry of Finance in written reply to a question in Lok Sabha today.