Every year Namibians are treated to staged announcements about banking fees. A card swipe here, a bundle package there, and pages of claims about “financial inclusion.â€
What no one explains is the system behind the fees—the layers of agreements and cross‑charges that decide who pays what every time a card is used.
Now, thanks to an investigation by the Namibian Competition Commission, a little of that machinery has been forced into the light.
The Commission’s probe into the Payments Association of Namibia (PAN) and the country’s commercial banks found that, for years, they didn’t simply compete on fees. They agreed on them.
Through a Payment Clearing House Card Schedule, interchange fees—the charges banks levy on each other for card transactions—were fixed across the industry. The Commission’s own summary makes it clear: instead of each bank setting its own rates based on its own costs, they collectively agreed a schedule. That is textbook price‑fixing, and under Section 23 of the Competition Act, it’s prohibited.
PAN has now admitted the contravention and entered into a consent agreement, with a penalty of just under N$320,000 pending court confirmation. That sum is a rounding error compared to the decades of fees collected under a structure that denied customers the benefit of genuine competition.
This matters because interchange fees are not abstract. They are baked into every card payment in Namibia. A retailer pays them to their acquiring bank. Those costs roll into the prices of goods and services. Customers see only the surface charge—if they see anything at all. The system’s complexity shields the real economics from scrutiny.
When banks hike charges and frames it as digital progress, that increase sits on top of an already‑fixed interchange layer. These announcements are published, word for word, in media outlets that rarely interrogate them. And all of it happens against the backdrop of month‑end ATM queues, a blunt reminder that genuine access and affordability are still elusive.
The Commission’s findings should change the conversation. This isn’t just about one year’s fee sheet. It’s about how payment systems are governed, how agreements are structured, and how a lack of transparency keeps customers in the dark. Until interchange rates are set through real competition rather than collective agreement, and until banks stop dressing regulatory disclosures in marketing fluff, no amount of app upgrades or free SMS alerts will make the system fairer.
Namibians deserve more than rehearsed announcements. They deserve to know exactly where their money goes each time they swipe.
*Briefly is a weekly column that’s opinionated and analytical. It sifts through the noise to make sense of the numbers, trends and headlines shaping business and the economy — with insight, wit and just enough scepticism to keep things interesting. THE VIEWS EXPRESSED ARE NOT OUR OWN; we simply relay them as part of the conversation.
