New proposed pay per transaction scheme not so popular

August 27, 2007

The Office of Fair Trading is currently looking into ways in which lenders can make their products a little less confusing. Hidden charges often cause many people to become so far in debt that they cannot get out of it. However, one proposed idea to get rid of these hidden charges and introduce a “pay as you go” option is not going down too well with consumers.

The idea is to pay a fee up front to fund your personal account. This means that you could pay up to £300 per year just to use your account. Obviously this is unacceptable to most people and so the proposed change is not proving to be popular!

The charges that are currently given out to consumers vary quite considerably. There are charges for withdrawing money from your account, for purchasing items and even for having an account in the first place. It has angered thousands of consumers and that is why the Office of Fair Trading is currently looking into new options. However, if all of their options are going to be as ridiculous as the pay per transaction scheme then it is likely that millions of consumers are not going to be happy.

Yougov actually did a survey which consisted of 2,000 people and the majority of those questioned said they would rather keep the current payment system rather than change it to a pay per transaction scheme.
The reason these changes are being suggested, could be due to the fact that countries such as Australia, North America and Western Europe all have both free transactions as well as optional ones which cost a little extra. This may well be working fine for those countries, but it is likely that Britons will not be so welcoming to this kind of transaction.

Overall it is likely that the plans will not go ahead, but if they do then it will hit consumers quite hard.