Regulator cuts credit card limits to reduce risk

ISTANBUL - Hürriyet Daily News

According to a new regulation, which will be valid starting from next year, individuals will have a single limit for all the credit cards they are holding. Hürriyet photo

Credit card users will have to tighten their purse strings in 2012 as a new measure is to take effect setting a single spending limit for credit card holders. 

Fears that Europe’s debt crisis will remain unsolved in the short-term and negative economic expectations for 2012, such as Turkish growth expectations falling below 4 percent, have pushed the Turkish government to take action, according to the daily Radikal. 

Salary-based limits

The Banking Regulation and Supervision Agency (BDDK) will set a single limit for credit card holders and the limit will be calculated by adding the credit card customer’s annual salary and other auxiliary sources of income, according to the CNBC-e web site. The BDDK is allegedly disturbed by credit card debt which has exceeded 200 billion lira. It wants to keep spending under control and limit risk.
The number of people who have failed to pay their credit card debt in the first ten months of 2011 are 347,733. 

This number is up from 310,000 for the whole of 2010, according to the figures released by the Turkish Central Bank. 

A law setting a credit card limit is not new, according to Radikal. There was a similar law enacted on March 15, 2006 called the “Bank Cards and Credit Cards Law.”According to Article 9 of this law, “a person’s credit card limit for the first year could not exceed double the person’s monthly salary and for the second year the limit was not allowed to exceed four times the monthly salary.” k HDN