Honduras National Banking and Insurance Commission amends credit and financing card rules on interest calculation and merchant point-of-sale practices

Honduras’ National Banking and Insurance Commission (CNBS) has amended the Regulation on Credit and Financing Cards to align it with recent reforms to the Credit Card Law, including changes intended to ensure cardholder payments reduce the outstanding balance used to calculate interest and new requirements for how affiliated merchants process in-person card transactions. The amendments revise Articles 1, 37 and 45 and update Annex 3. The interest-calculation provisions set a payment allocation order in which payments are applied first to any interest due, then to the prior statement “old balance”, then to prior-month purchases and finally to current-month purchases (starting with the oldest), and treat an unpaid old balance as a new charge for interest-calculation purposes. Merchant obligations include prohibitions on surcharges, retaining the card and imposing minimum purchase amounts, plus requirements to verify and record cardholder identification, process transactions through POS (or other means) in the cardholder’s view and presence for in-person payments, obtain the cardholder’s signature, and provide the original invoice and a copy of the card transaction receipt. Certain requirements do not apply to e-commerce transactions, which instead must have certifications and security measures in line with CNBS provisions. CNBS granted supervised institutions one month to adapt, counted from 5 June 2025 when the legislative reforms entered into force, and required immediate restitution to cardholders if interest was charged during the adaptation period in a way that contravenes the reformed law. The CNBS resolution itself enters into force upon publication in the Official Gazette.