The changes come into force on January 1st, the date on which it will be mandatory to have a bank card associated with your account to be able to carry out operations such as payment for services, payments to the State or mobile phone top-ups even on your digital channels ('homebanking').
From 1 January, payments through home banking channels and bank apps will have to be associated with a debit or credit card and can no longer be made from the current account.
Most customers have a bank card, however at the moment this is not mandatory to make some transactions (namely on digital channels). It is common for the same customer to have two bank accounts and to have a bank card in only one of the accounts.
From January onwards, to carry out ATM operations as payment for services (these are not operations such as transfers, for example) it will be necessary to always have a card (debit or credit) associated with the account.
This change in the conditions of operations translates into an increase in expenses, as having a card implies the payment of commissions to the bank by the customer. A debit card costs, on average, around 20 euros per year.
According to what we found, only in "very specific situations it may be necessary to associate a new card, real or virtual, depending on the offer of the Payment Service Provider/Financial Institution".