New regulations issued for credit card interest rates

According to the "Notification on Maximum Interest Rates applied in Credit Card Transactions," published in the Official Gazette yesterday, maximum credit card interest rates will be based on the weighted mean of effective annual interest rates notified by banks to the Central Bank of Turkey on a weekly basis, including all the expenditures applied for consumer loans used in Turkish liras within that week. This rate will be aggregated for the whole banking sector, and the related monthly ordinary interest rate will be calculated. An arithmetic mean of this rate for the past three weeks will be calculated in order to reach the monthly consumer loan interest rate.

According to the notification, the maximum conventional interest rate applied for credit card transactions in liras will be 2.02 if the monthly consumer loan interest rates are between 1.15 percent and 1.59 percent and will be calculated by adding 43 base points to the monthly consumer loan interest rates if the consumer loan interest rate is higher than 1.59 percent. If this rate is lower than 1.15 percent, then the maximum conventional interest rate will be calculated by adding 87 base points to the consumer loan interest rate. The maximum conventional interest rate applied for credit card transactions in foreign currencies will be 80 percent of the monthly maximum conventional interest rate applied for credit card transactions in liras.

The monthly maximum default interest rate applied for credit card transactions in liras will be calculated by adding 50 base points to the maximum conventional interest rate applied for credit card transactions in liras. The monthly maximum default interest rate applied for credit card transactions in foreign currencies will be calculated by adding 50 base points to the maximum conventional interest rate applied for credit card transactions in foreign currencies.

The monthly conventional dividend payout ratio to be applied by participation banks cannot exceed the monthly maximum conventional interest rates calculated according to the terms of the notification, and monthly default penalties cannot exceed the monthly maximum default interest rates. The Central Bank of Turkey will publish and announce the monthly maximum conventional and default interest rates for the January-March, April-June, July-September and October-December terms according to the notification. With this notification, Notification no. 2006/1, which regulated the maximum interest rates applied to credit card transactions, will be annulled on Dec. 31.