The Banking Supervision Department of the Bank of Israel has announced further measures regarding banking fees, which are part of an amendment to the Banking (Service to the Customer)(Fees) Rules, 5768–2008, and the publication of a Supervisory Order.

This amendment joins another amendment that was recently published (and came into effect last month), which led to the cancellation of a number of fees collected from banking corporation customers, including the direct channel fee for a charge to a debit card, the fee for printing a confirmation of ownership of an account (one confirmation per year), housing loan management fees, deferred payment fees collected for deferred payment transactions on payment cards, and others.
 
The following are the main points of the amendments:
 
*  Declaration of the fee for notices as a supervised fee, and setting the maximum fee at 5 shekels (80p).  This amendment comes from a recommendation of the Bank's "team to examine how to increase competitiveness in the banking system." Due to the high price of "services for sending notices" at some of the banks (prices ranging from NIS 20 to NIS 90 per notice), and in view of the fact that this is a service that the customer can obtain only at the bank at which he manages his account, it should be declared a supervised service pursuant to s9k(a)(2) Banking (Service to the Customer) Law, 5741–1981. The maximum price for this service (sending notices and warnings of late payments) is not to exceed 5 shekels per notice.
*  Cancellation of the charge fee for a depositor of a cheque that bounces.
*  Non-collection of debit card fees for a customer who holds a credit card.  In conjunction with some recommendations and measures to introduce debit cards in Israel and to increase competition in the field of debit cards, as part of a report published on 10 February, a banking corporation is not to be allowed to collect card fees for a debit card it has issued to a customer who also holds a credit card issued by the same banking corporation.  This amendment is intended to encourage the distribution of debit cards among customers and to serve as an alternative to cash payments.
*  Foreign currency transactions and foreign currency withdrawals abroad. As part of the amendment to the Banking Rules published on 29 January, a change has been made to the fees collected from card holders for foreign currency transactions and for foreign currency withdrawals abroad. The current amendment completes the process begun with the previous amendment, to make it easier and simpler for customers to compare, and mainly provides credit card companies with the ability to set separate rates for these services by distinguishing between major currencies (US$ and €) as one rate and the other currencies as another rate.  Due to this amendment, the effective date of the previous amendment is being delayed to 1 July.