Fund Your Accounts To Enable Us Deduct Accumulated N50 Stamp Duty, Access Bank Emails Customers

Access Bank has announced it will be charging its customers N50 stamp duty which has accumulated for three months. Access Bank made this known in a mail sent to its customers, informing those without money in their account to fund it in order to enable the lender to debit them of the accumulated fee.

Access Bank said the deduction of N50 for stamp duty is in line with the Central Bank of Nigeria's (CBN) directive that the charge should be done on all credit received into current and savings accounts. It stated that it is in respect of deposits and electronic transfers into all naira-denominated accounts for transaction values of N10,000 and above.

In the mail sent to one of the customers and seen by AllNews, Access Bank stated that the customer should fund the account in order to debit accumulated stamp duty fees on transactions made by the customers between February 1, 2020, and April 30, 2020. The bank said it discovered that the charges hadn't been made on the customer's account.

"In compliance with the CBN mandate, we will be required to process the accumulated charges for the said period on your account for remittance to the Central Bank of Nigeria. We request that you kindly fund your account to accommodate this charge." adding that Access Bank is sorry for the inconvenience caused.

There's A Problem

Allnews had reported that Nigerians will be charged N50 once there's a notification of transaction - regardless the medium of the electronic. Banks will serve as the collector for the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS). The charge will affect individual-to-individual, corporate-to-corporate transactions, as well as transactions between corporate and individual(s).

According to the circular, the FIRS will charge the N50 on services on fixed duty instruments such as Power of Attorney, Certificate of Attorney, Proxy forms, Appointment of receivers, Memorandum of Understanding, Joint Venture Agreements, Guarantors form, Ordinary agreements and Receipts.

Other services to be charged are Ad-valorem instruments such as; Tenancy or lease agreements, legal mortgage or debentures, Sales agreements and Deed of assignments, the circular reads. These are the services that the FIRS will charge the N50 on once there's a form of electronic acknowledgment of money transactions.

But the problem is, the N50 stamp duty charge was made public three weeks ago without a time frame, but Access Bank stated that it will be charging customers from as far back as February down to April. This led to customers attacking the company's credibility on social media platform, Twitter.

Customers Are Furious With Access Bank

The mail from Access Bank led to customers criticising the lender for demanding customers to fund their accounts in order to charge them for accumulated stamp duty. In a series of tweets from Access Bank's customers, most were angry and shocked at the demand made.

While responding to the mail sent by Access Bank, Abubakar Usman, the Special Assistant on New Media to the Nigerian Senate President, Lawan Ahmed, stated, "Access Bank is asking me to fund my account in case there is no money inside so they can deduct the accumulated N50 stamp duty charges they inadvertently have not been charging me so they can remit to CBN. See me see wahala o."

While reacting to the tweet from Usman, a Twitter user with username, Ser Udofia stated, "Received same mail from Access bank. I felt like strangulating whoever sent that mail. So all the unexplained charges on my account  not enough."

A Twitter user who identified himself as @hobiaga on Twitter tweeted, "Access bank is asking me to fund my account because they fail to charge me for stamp duty since feb. The last 1k inside, I will use it to fund my 1xbet." he said while accompanying the tweet with the email he received.

One of the Twitter users, @_swannbeauty who commented on the situation stated, "i thought it was just me that got the ridiculous mail. like how is it my fault you forgot to remove the charges, so now i should put money there for you to take? RIDICULOUS!"

Another Twitter user, @harisynn tweeted, "I just couldn't stop laughing when I got this mail. As in, I fund my account for them to take as if I'm owing them LMAO. Haven't seen anything this silly."