Card users get more protection

To better protect the nation's credit card and cash-advance card users, financial authorities have promulgated two new measures which took effect yesterday.

The first policy, aimed at strengthening transparent dissemination of information, requires all the card issuers to publish their card transaction rates on their individual Web sites.

Demands

The Financial Supervisory Commission demanded that all financial institutions issuing credit cards or cash cards must disclose detailed information of handling fees and revolving interest rates on their Web sites.

The Cabinet-level financial regulator noted that, to the convenience of consumers, all card issuers must publish this information with a direct cyber-link to their Web site's home page.

According to the commission, nearly all of the 54 credit card issuers and 34 cash card issuers had met the requirement as of press time yesterday.

Jong Huey-jen (鍾慧貞), the commission's deputy director-general of the Bureau of Monetary Affairs, said the bureau will use moral persuasion to convince issuers that fail to present complete information.

"All the institutions have been quick to follow the regulation to benefit consumers," she said.

Conditions

The commission also tightened application conditions for holders of a secondary credit card.

Starting yesterday, credit-card holders can only apply for a supplementary card for their spouse, parents, children, siblings or their spouse's parents.

This change was made in light of growing disputes caused by cardholders' boyfriend or girlfriend in the past also being granted a supplementary credit card without having to pay the card bills.

New measure

To regulate cash card issuers' bad-loan ratio, the bureau set a new supervisory measure in the middle of June, which will be put into practice starting this month.

The measure, also known as the "3-5-8" management policy, specified that banks with a non-performing loan (NPL) ratio between 3 percent and 5 percent are required to submit improvement plans.

Banks with an NPL ratio between 5 percent and 8 percent will be admonished and required to rectify the situation in three months, while those institutions with an NPL ratio topping 8 percent will be forced to suspend issuing new cards.

As of June, the nation's 34 cash-card issuers registered an average bad loan ratio of 1.36 percent with seven banks presenting a zero NPL ratio, according to statistics provided by the bureau.

To help manage the debt expansion in the nation's consumer banking business, the Financial Supervisory Commission on Monday ordered banks to ban customers from repaying bank loans with credit cards.