Of course, all banks charge transfer fees of two dollars and up when an electronic transfer is being made to another bank.
But, what you probably didn't know is that the transfers are made on the APSS3 infrastructure owned and operated by the Central Bank. They only charge the commercial banks 25 cents per transfer. The banks then slap on their excess fees for a nice, effortless profit that nets them millions of dollars in easy money every year.
And the amount they are making off those transfers grows as the number of electronic transfers increases annually. Governor Michael says that in the last 5 years - those transfers have moved tens of billions of dollars across the Belizean economy:
Kareem Michael, Governor of the Central Bank of Belize
"We've had a steady incremental growth in the volume of online transactions and digital payments over the past five years. I would say that some total of this is an astronomical number. The value of these transactions online tops 30 billion Belize dollars over the past five years."
That's billions with a "B".
