Access Bank Plc has rescinded in the stamp duty charge it debited its customers on Saturday. This comes as the bank’s customers took to social media to express their utter dissatisfaction about the debits that occurred in their accounts.
The bank disclosed its decision to refund customers in a statement via its Twitter handle on Sunday, saying that the bank will bear the cost of the stamp duty charge.
The bank had on Saturday 20 June, sent email to its customers asking the customers to fund their accounts, so that the bank can debit stamp duty charge for the period of 1 February 2020 to 30 April 2020.
Despite customers’ complaints at the time of receiving the email, the bank went ahead on Saturday 27 June to debit the accounts of their customers for the said stamp duty.
The debit didn’t go well with customers especially in this time of economic hardship in the country.
Social media was awash with customers expressing their dissatisfaction and grievance towards the bank.
Thus, on Sunday 28 June the bank said it has heard the customers feedback and decided to refund the debits as well as bear the cost of the stamp duty.
The bank’s statement read in part “we have heard our customer’s feedback that this charge is unwelcome, especially at this time against a challenging backdrop. We have considered your feedback and have decided to pay the Stamp Duty on our customers’ behalf for the affected period only.
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“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 will still have to remit these funds via the CBN to the Federal Government, we realize that we got it wrong by debiting our customers late and we are refunding the affected stamp duty charge today to all affected customers”
At the time of this report, some customers have been refunded while some say they are yet to receive their refund.
Written by;
Ifunanya Ikueze
