Editorial: Business banking charges passed on to customers

Written for the April 9, 2021, issue of Penguin News.

IN various shops and restaurants around Stanley you may have started to see a framed letter, signed with various logos, stating, due to a 30p charge on every cheque or transfer slip payment processed by SCB: “We have no alternative but to pass these charges on to our customers” as Standard Chartered Bank (SCB) have not provided “any other way of us processing payments locally.”

When a small business takes payments which average between £20 and £40 at a time, from a few dozen to a couple of hundred transactions a month, and are unable to set themselves up with a foreign account through which they could take card payments, I would say that the 30p transfer slip or cheque charge is absolutely enough of a blight to accurately say “we have no alternative but to pass these charges on to our customers.” It's less accurate when a business is large enough to have options for recouping costs other than passing it on as a flat fee to the customer.

People can just make and spend money, saving and investing it if they're savvy. Businesses, on the other hand, have several ways to absorb and redistribute costs and expenses. They also have corporate social responsibility; the expectation that a business maintains a balance between making a profit and contributing to society.

It is implied in the letter which you’ll see on tills around town that businesses think poorly of introducing charges without providing any other way of doing things, but by uniting together to pass the entire cost onto the customer almost 3 months after the announcement was made about the change in banking fees, they’re doing exactly that to their own customers.

The point isn't whether you have, or want, a card. The point is that large businesses uniting together to force costs onto customers - who have already been charged once for this service (£1.25 for a cheque book, 5p a cheque, and a further 30p per cheque used in participating establishments) - is using the strength of the businesses against the customers instead of for them.

I absolutely understand your frustrations, business owners, at this cost coming from up on high at the bank, but the fact is that comparable costs are also being passed onto your loyal, paying, patrons already. It seems like this is something which we could work together on, rather than take a backwards step which pits us against each other.

Nicholas Roberts