Low-use customers of Barclaycard are facing the possibility of having to pay for the privilege of not using their card enough. Barclaycard has 9.8 million customers and around one million of these simply never use their credit cards. People get new cards and do not bother to close their old accounts, leaving regular users to subsidise the costs to the company of maintaining the inactive accounts.
The fee which could be introduced from September is expected to be between £10 and £20 per year and certainly no more than £2 per month. This would raise up to £20 million pounds per year which would go part way to recouping money lost after changes were made last year under new Office of Fair Trading rules.
Barclaycard has said that they will write to customers likely to be affected by the new charges to warn them. It will then be up to the customer whether to start using their card close the account or pay the fee. Although other credit card companies such as Lloyds TSB have already introduced a charge for inactive accounts, Barclaycard, which has 15% of the market, is the biggest company to consider doing so.
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