Air Bank has prepared new business conditions for its clients, which will start to apply from December 14, 2023. In them, for example, it specifies the conditions for interest rates, contact payments, simplifying direct debits and expands the options for standing orders.
Let’s take a step-by-step look at what the bank has prepared for you since December.
Mail is out of the game
If you decide to use the bank’s services as a new client who wants to sign a framework agreement, then you can do it in several ways:
In a mobile application, in internet banking, or newly at a bank branch.
Air Bank will no longer allow you to send the contract by post, this option ends in December.
Preparation for interest linked to reference rates
Air Bank is preparing the field for the future so that it can interest the balances on the accounts not only with the annual interest rate that it announces in the interest rate overview, but also with the interest rate linked to the annual reference rate, which the bank will reduce by reduction, i.e. by a certain number of percentage points. In such a case, however, the account will only bear interest if, after subtracting the reduction, the result is a positive number. On one type of account, individual balances will be able to earn interest in different ways. However, the bank does not want to reveal which clients the reference rates will apply to in the future.
At the moment, we are not introducing new interest linked to the reference rates. With the new terms and conditions, we only wanted to prepare for the event that we would like to introduce such an adjustment in the future. If we decide to do so, we will let the clients know about it two months in advance, including explaining in detail how it will look in practice and which clients it will affect, the bank’s spokeswoman Jana Pokorná told Měšec.cz.
What is a reference rate?
This rate forms the basis for many different financial contracts, such as mortgages, overdrafts and other, more complex financial transactions. Reference rates are calculated by an independent entity, most often to capture the costs associated with borrowing money in different markets. For example, they can express how much it costs a bank to borrow from another bank. Alternatively, they may reflect how much it costs the bank to raise funds from other sources, such as pension funds, insurance companies and money market funds.
A bank can lend money to a company at an agreed interest rate, set at a specific reference rate plus 2%, which means the company will pay interest 2% higher than the current reference rate. Borrowing costs will thus rise when the reference rate rises and fall when the reference rate falls. In this case, the reference rate can be a reliable, independent and relatively simple helper for all involved.
Source: European central bank
If the bank will interest the balance on the account at an interest rate that depends on the amount of the reference rate (reduced by the reduction), it will adjust the amount of interest 15th calendar day after the effective date of any change in the reference rate and at the same time issues a new overview of interest rates. If the rates go down, you will be notified by a message in Internet Banking or by e-mail. Conversely, if the interest rate increases due to an increase in the reference rate, the bank does not have to inform you of this.
The bank also clarifies that if you overdraw the available balance on the account without permission, the bank may charge you late payment interest for the resulting negative balance. He can recover from you, including the costs that he incurs with recovery.
Offsetting debts
When you owe a bank something, the bank has the right to take everything it owns from your accounts. You will find out about each so-called credit, i.e. when money is taken from your account to repay the debt, not only from the monthly statement, but you will now also see the credit in internet and mobile banking in the payment history.
The new thing is that the bank can start offsetting even when you don’t have enough money in your current account to repay your loans. At such a time, the set-off is not counted as a proper repayment, because this “forced” method is not a form of proper performance.
A child from the age of 8 can use your account
Do you want to give disposal rights to your account to your offspring? Until now, you could arrange them for a child who is at least 10 years old. The age limit is now reduced to 8 years.
What is also new is that the person to whom you give disposition rights can see the payment order templates that you have prepared. Banking will show it known counterparties from the transaction history, even from accounts for which it does not have disposal rights assigned by you.
Deposit machines will already be in the conditions officially
Shared deposit machines are subject to the new business conditions. When the bank allows it, you will be able to deposit money into your account using selected deposit machines of other banks.
Standing orders
With a standing order, you will be able to suspend regular payments without having to cancel it. The command will remain preset among the other commands, it will just be inactive after the time you choose. It is important to know that if you decide to change the bank through bank mobility, where the bank will also transfer existing standing orders for you, in this case it will not transfer these suspended orders.
Once we allow you to do so, you will be able to suspend the standing payment order for a period of time in the future. In that case, we will transfer them to the new bank as part of the mobility, the bank promises in the terms and conditions.
Direct debit for customers of the operator O2
If you are a customer of O2 Czech Republic, in the future the bank is preparing the option for you to set up a direct debit for payments to your operator. How do you do it? Use the mobile application to scan the QR code, which you will see in the O2 user interface. As soon as you scan the QR code, the application will pre-fill the direct debit for you. You then set the amount of the limit and possibly the duration, confirm the direct debit and the bank will notify O2 that you are done.
Payments per contact
In this chapter, the bank greatly modified, or rather almost completely rewrote the original wording, which was more difficult for the customer to understand. However, this is more about clarification than the introduction of news, and we won’t spoil anything with an overview of the rules for contact payments.
For payments to the contact, you enter your phone number with the area code, which must be +420 or +421 (the Slovak area code is new). Air Bank registers this number in the register of the Czech National Bank and links it to your bank account. Via contact payment, you can only send payment from a crown account and in Czech crowns at least in the amount 1 CZK and a maximum of 5000 CZK. When you enter the recipient’s phone number, the bank will show you the name of the account, most often the first and last name or business name of the account holder. If everything is fine, you will confirm the payment. If the data does not match, you must send the payment in the normal way. If you allow the bank to access your contact list on your phone, you can choose the recipient of the payment directly from it. You will also immediately see which of your contacts have registered, and you can therefore pay them this way. Likewise, once you have your number registered with the CNB, anyone will be able to send money to you without knowing your account number. If the bank asks you to prove that the main phone number is really yours, you have to do it, otherwise they can terminate your registration. In case of reasonable suspicion that someone is abusing the number, it can do so with immediate effect. In other cases, after the expiry of the 2-month notice period, which runs from the moment of delivery of our notice to your internet banking.
Contact payments will only work as one-time payment orders with no future maturity, either immediately or by default. So you won’t be able to use them for standing orders.
By default, the bank sends payment only on working days, on Fridays and on working days followed by a holiday, then only to 4:30 p.m.
You can enter payments only in Czech crowns and only if you have enough money in your account. For security reasons, the bank may set a minimum and maximum limit for the amount you can enter via contact payments. So is the number of payments you can make over a period of time.
If you want to link your phone number to an account you have with Air Bank, but this number is already linked to an account in another bank, you must first cancel the registration with another bank. And vice versa, i.e. if you want to link your phone number in another bank, which you already have linked to an account with Air Bank.
What if you cancel your bank account?
When you cancel an account with Air Bank linked to your main phone number, the bank also cancels your registration for contact payments.
If you do not enter any payment to the contact within a period of 6 months, or no one sends money to your phone number, the bank will cancel your registration. This will only happen if the bank succeeds in verifying that this registered number still demonstrably belongs to you. The bank will inform you about the cancellation of the registration.
What if there is a technical failure of the registry?
If the CNB registry fails, payments to the contact will temporarily stop working and you will have to pay in the usual way.
2023-10-14 21:01:31
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