The 20-year collaboration with Swiss Post, which was announced by BAWAG in 2017, will finally end in March 2020. As reported by the “Press” (Thursday edition), BAWAG has now taken Swiss Post to court and obtained an injunction against it.
The occasion was a Swiss Post customer campaign for BAWAG-P.S.K. customers. Since November, they have had to pay EUR 9.90 for cash deposits to third-party accounts at the counter. This levy was ordered by BAWAG and would also benefit it, but would be handled by the post office employees.
In order to appease frustrated customers, Swiss Post distributed “collecting passports”. For every cash transfer, three euros would be credited, the passports can be redeemed from April – when the post office Bank99 starts operating – and post offices are no longer responsible for BAWAG accounts. Every BAWAG-P.S.K. customer who then opens an account with Bank99 can have the money saved on the collective pass paid into this account.
Post must discontinue the campaign until further notice
BAWAG saw this as an infringement of BAWAG’s exclusivity for banking services within the post office, as set out in the contracts between the post office and the bank, and went to court. The Post is now forbidden until further notice to issue collective passports or to credit further deposits into existing passports. In addition, Swiss Post must inform participants of the collective pass campaign of the decision to discontinue the campaign on its own initiative.
The Post announced that it would appeal. The collective passports would remain valid, it said to the newspaper. A post spokesman is quoted as saying that because BAWAG started to dismantle self-service machines at the beginning of the year, customers were forced to make use of the more expensive services at the counter, for example when making deposits.
BAWAG argued and defended the fee for cash payments to third-party accounts, which had increased from EUR 7.90 to EUR 9.90 on November 1, with high processing costs. Despite the high costs, BAWAG continues to offer the service and thus also give third-party bank customers – for example customers of online banks without their own branch infrastructure – the opportunity to use this service.
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