Merchants want the finance ministry to put a cap on bank charges for them
Electronic vouchers for food products, which replaced paper ones this year, are a pro-inflationary factor. According to the merchants of the large chains, the costs of their processing burden them with unnecessary fees, the head of the Association for Modern Trade Nikolay Vulkanov told “24 Chasa” on Wednesday.
“The association, in which the major retail chains are members, supports any optimization leading to facilitation for employers and their employees, such as electronic vouchers. However, they become a pro-inflationary factor, because the costs of maintaining the service after its electronicization increase by 1.8%, since bank fees are also included”, said Vulkanov.
This, according to him, leads to an imbalance in the retail market, because payment with vouchers has been growing at a breakneck pace recently. This is because employers save part of the tax by paying part of the wages with vouchers. Recently, payments with them have reached 8-9% of turnover in retail sales of food, at least in large chains, and there are prerequisites to increase even more, said Vulkanov.
The association insists on urgent decisions to limit fees and commissions in issuing and using electronic vouchers.
There is currently a fee that the bank of the merchant where the voucher is used pays to the bank that serves the issuer of the voucher. According to Vulkanov, the Minister of Finance has the authority to cap this fee at 0.3%.
The Finance Ministry said it would not comment on the proposal for now. A budget procedure is currently underway, and most likely the request will be considered in parallel with changes in the Corporate Income Tax Act, in which vouchers are regulated.