Coronavirus: What Happens to Credit Card Maturities

In the framework of the total quarantine ordered by the national government, the compensation of checks was suspended, so the payment of these documents is deferred until at least April 1, according to the newspaper. The nation.

The measure, for analysts, may cause the payment chain to collapse in some sectors, although from the Central Bank (BCRA) they clarified that they have already instructed banks, in those cases, to offer companies or businesses with checks drawn or without being able to circulate “working capital loans at a rate of 24% to cover liquidity shortages.”

“The checks you deposit from today [por ayer] and until 3/31 they are processed with a date of 1/4. This will bring problems. For example, service stations pay in advance for the fuel they receive, for this they use collection accounts where they deposit both cash and checks and a similar methodology is used by some food distributors, “alerted financial analyst Christian Buteler, quoted by the Buenos Aires newspaper.

“It does not seem to me that it is worth cutting the compensation of checks because the companies that issued checks and cannot pay them are very likely not going to be able to pay them on April 1 or in 3 weeks and with the aggravating circumstance that they prevent paying to companies and people who can cover their checks. Taking into account that we are a few days away from the end of the month, this could jeopardize the payment of salaries, “agreed economist Alejandro Rodríguez.

Moratorium on payments

On the other hand, there is a moratorium on all installment maturities or final cancellations related to bank financing of all kinds that fall during the period of compulsory social isolation.

This includes the summaries of credit cards that have an expiration date within the quarantine, as established in communication “A” 6.2, published by the BCRA :.

The norm establishes that “the maturities of financing of financial entities that are registered between March 20, inclusive until March 31, 2020 inclusive, will pass to April 1, 2020”, so banks will not be able to demand effective payment until then.

The postponement is general, since it reaches the installments of pledge, mortgage and personal credits.

In addition, as part of prevention measures, banks will not attend their branches until April, although they must keep the automatic service channels active and at the same time guarantee the recharge of ATMs.

The BCRA said that “it will guarantee the provision of cash for banks to adopt all necessary measures, including human resources, to ensure sufficient provision of funds at ATMs and the continuity of operations related to the withdrawal of cash at points of extrabank extraction “.

Likewise, it encouraged banks to have an increase in the withdrawal limits allowed in ATMs, which most entities have already communicated to their clients.