Access bank of Nigeria, has promised to shoulder the cost of stamp duty from February to April 2020 of all its customers.
Between Friday and Saturday, a lot of customers banking with Access Bank, took to their social media handles to lament about illegal withdrawal by the bank from their accounts, in a name of stamp duty charge. Others feared maybe the bank was under attack by cyber-criminals.
Stamp Duty Update
The bank has released an update to that effect. According the statement, “Earlier this week, we informed our customers that we had inadvertently not charged stamp duty on some accounts from February – April 2020 as mandated by the Federal government.” they stated in the letter.
The letter further said that ” Stamp Duty charge collection is in compliance with the mandate of the ‘Finance Act, 2019 (Stamp Duty Act, Cap 58). we are required by the law to apply this charge as applicable and remit funds collected to the Federal Government.
However we have heard our customers feedback, stating that the charge is unwelcome, especially at this time against the challenging economic backdrop. So after considering all your feedback we have decided to pay the “Stamp Duty on our customers’ behalf for the affected period only. This is to say that all individual and SME’s who were debited for the accumulated Stamp Duty charge from February to April 2020 will be refunded.
We commend the management of Access Bank for listening to the cry of the people. prior to this time so many people with little or no funds in their accounts have been asked to credit their accounts in other to allow the bank to debit the Stamp Duty charge from their account. Am sure we can all agree now that access bank is a customer friendly bank.
