Access Bank Plc has apologised to its customers and said it will bear the cost of the stamp duty it originally deducted from its customers’ accounts, covering February through April 2020.
Recall that last week, DigitalTimesNG reported that Access Bank Plc had said through an email to its customers that it recently discovered a mistake in its operations records, whereby stamp duty charges on applicable transactions were not passed on to customers.
The bank said in the mail that the omissions occurred between February 1st, 2020, and April 30th, 2020.
Though the tier-1 bank said it was deeply apologetic for this error, it, however, noted that all concerned customers were to prepare to pay off the accrued charges.
Many Access Bank customers, however, claimed on Social media they did not see the bank’s message announcing its plans to deduct the accrued charges.
We have heard your feedback and we hope this goes a long way to make it better.
Thank you for sticking with us.#AccessMore pic.twitter.com/ZpJLRUBT61— Access Bank Plc (@myaccessbank) June 28, 2020
Some customers said the deductions, even if legal, were outrageous and beyond what was necessary, with #AccessBankScam trending at number one spot in Nigeria as at the time of writing this report.
But the bank said in a statement via a Twitter post on Sunday that it will no longer be going forward with its earlier decision to collect accrued stamp duty charges for February through to April 2020, from its customers.
DigitalTimesNG gathered that the bank’s decision to halt the deductions followed an avalanche of social media backlash against the tier-1 bank this weekend, as customers expressed their utter dissatisfaction over the debits.
Access Bank explained in the tweet that the decision to cancel the stamp duty collection was because it cared about its customers but however, maintained that its earlier decision to withdraw the accrued charges was legal.
The bank said it will go ahead and bear the cost of the stamp duty for February through to April 2020 alone on behalf of its customers.
According to the bank, “Earlier this week, we informed all our customers that we had inadvertently not charged stamp duty on some accounts from February to April 2020 as mandated by the Federal Government.
“Stamp duty collection is in compliance with the mandate of the Finance Act, 2019 (Stamp Duty Act, Cap S8). We are required by law to apply this charge as applicable and remit all funds collected to the Federal Government.
“However, we have heard our customers’ feedback that this charge is unwelcome, especially at this time against a challenging economic backdrop.
“We have considered your feedback and have decided to pay the Stamp Duty on our customers’ behalf for the affected period only.
“This means all individuals and SMEs who were debited for the accumulated Stamp Duty charge for February to April 2020, will be refunded.
“While we still have to remit these funds via the CBN to the Federal Government, we realise that we got it wrong by debiting our customers late, and we are refunding the affected stamp duty charge today to all our affected customers.”
Access Bank said it hopes the decision to refund all those who were debited would go a long way towards making them feel better.