Until now, interbank fees for payments made with cards issued in Serbia were regulated by law. Under a new amendment to the law, the draft of which has been published by the National Bank of Serbia (NBS), fee caps will also apply to cards issued by foreign banks when they are used for payments in Serbia.
When the Law on Interbank Fees came into force at the end of 2018, it introduced limits in Serbia on the maximum level of fees, which, although charged between banks, were effectively built into the prices of goods and services paid by all consumers. At that time, the law applied exclusively to cards issued by banks headquartered in Serbia.
Under the new draft law, which was open for public consultation until 11 June, the fee cap will be extended to cards issued abroad whenever they are used at points of sale in Serbia or on Serbian online retail websites.
According to the law, the interbank fee for a transaction carried out in Serbia may not exceed 0.2% of the transaction value for debit cards, or 0.3% for credit card transactions.
These limits will now also apply to foreign-issued cards. When payment is made with a debit card (where funds are immediately deducted from the account), the fee will be limited to 0.2% of the transaction amount, while the cap for foreign credit card transactions will be 0.3%.
How much is spent with foreign cards in Serbia?
According to NBS data, during 2025, foreign-issued cards (those issued by banks and other providers abroad) were used to withdraw 80.5 billion dinars from cash machines in Serbia through 3.3 million transactions.
At points of sale, through POS terminals, foreign cardholders spent a total of 211.26 billion dinars on goods and services in 2025, across 59 million transactions.
Limits also introduced for online payments
The law also introduces fee limits for online payments made with foreign cards on the websites of Serbian merchants, defined in the legislation as payments made “without the physical presence of the cardholder at the merchant’s premises”.
When a foreign card is used to make a purchase on a Serbian website, the fee may not exceed 1.15% of the transaction value for debit cards and 1.5% for foreign credit cards.
Lowering these fees will certainly be welcomed by banks that provide merchants with POS terminals, as their costs will be reduced. The question remains how positively foreign card issuers will view the decision.
When publishing the draft legislation, the National Bank of Serbia stated that it had prepared amendments to the Law on Interbank Fees and Special Rules for Payment Transactions Based on Payment Cards “with the aim of further improving the legal framework governing payment services and payment card operations”.
“The proposed amendments extend the scope of the law to international payment card transactions in order to further enhance transparency in payment card operations and reduce merchants’ costs of accepting payment cards, in line with practices applied within the European Union,” the central bank said.
What are these fees?
When the law was originally introduced, the National Bank of Serbia explained that these fees are paid by the acquiring bank – the bank that provides the POS terminal to the merchant — to the bank that issued the card, for every payment transaction carried out using that card.
“The acquiring bank passes these costs on to the seller, meaning they directly affect the merchant service charge paid for the use of POS terminals. Merchants then incorporate these costs into the prices of goods and services, meaning that, ultimately, all consumers pay them – both those who use payment cards and those who pay in cash,” the central bank explained at the time.
(eKapija, 15.06.2026)