Re­pub­lic Bank says it is paus­ing its in­crease in fees, which was in­tro­duced on Fri­day May 1, as the coun­try’s largest com­mer­cial bank stat­ed that it has been lis­ten­ing close­ly to the con­ver­sa­tions and feed­back re­gard­ing the high­er charges.

In an ad­ver­tise­ment in to­day’s news­pa­per, Re­pub­lic Bank said, “We un­der­stand that any change to your bank­ing costs caus­es con­cern, and we have no­ticed there has been some con­fu­sion about what these changes ac­tu­al­ly mean for you.

“Be­cause we val­ue your feed­back , we have de­cid­ed to pause the fee in­creas­es orig­i­nal­ly set for May 1, 2026 (no­tice of which was giv­en on April 1, 2026. We will share the new im­ple­men­ta­tion dates with you soon.”

The bank said it wants to take the time “to clear the air and en­sure that you have all the facts,” adding that its goal is sim­ple: to make sure its cus­tomers can bank in a way that is con­ve­nient, safe and, most im­por­tant­ly, af­ford­able.

In the ad­ver­tise­ment, Re­pub­lic ad­dressed the pro­posed fee in­creas­es on cheques, the in­tro­duc­tion of a $1.30 with­draw­al fee on de­posit ac­counts and fees on late pay­ments.

On the is­sue of cheques, the bank said the world is mov­ing away from pa­per cheques to dig­i­tal pay­ments be­cause the lat­ter is faster, safer and much cheap­er for its cus­tomers.

Point­ing out that less than 5 per cent of its cus­tomers ac­tive­ly use cheques as a medi­um of pay­ment, Re­pub­lic Bank said, “Main­tain­ing the old sys­tems is very ex­pen­sive. While we need to re­cov­er some of those costs, our main goal is to help you tran­si­tion to the free or low­er cost ‘any­time, any­where’ dig­i­tal op­tions that save you a trip to the bank.

Re­gard­ing the new fees for with­drawals, Re­pub­lic said the in­creas­es ap­ply on­ly to in-branch teller trans­ac­tions and that there will be no fee in­creas­es at ATMs, on­line or mo­bile trans­ac­tions or pay­ing with the bank’s deb­it card.

About the fees on late pay­ments and over­drafts, Re­pub­lic said it wants to help cus­tomers avoid these sit­u­a­tions.

Mean­while, oth­er com­mer­cial banks say they are main­tain­ing a cau­tious ap­proach to any im­me­di­ate changes to their own pric­ing struc­tures, while busi­ness­es and cus­tomers wait to see how the ad­just­ments will im­pact spend­ing habits.

Re­pub­lic Bank im­ple­ment­ed in­creas­es to fees on se­lect prod­ucts and ser­vices from May 1, in­clud­ing high­er charges for rou­tine trans­ac­tions, over­drafts and missed pay­ments.

The move sparked con­cern among cus­tomers al­ready fac­ing ris­ing liv­ing costs and tighter house­hold bud­gets.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions from Guardian Me­dia, Group CEO of First Cit­i­zens, Ja­son Julien, said the bank is not cur­rent­ly plan­ning any near-term ad­just­ments to its fees.

“At this time, we are not con­sid­er­ing any im­mi­nent changes to our fee struc­ture. Our ap­proach has al­ways been mea­sured and bal­anced, en­sur­ing af­ford­abil­i­ty for cus­tomers while sup­port­ing con­tin­ued in­vest­ment in ser­vice qual­i­ty, se­cu­ri­ty and dig­i­tal ca­pa­bil­i­ties,” Julien stat­ed.

“Our last ad­just­ment was back in 2023, and we have been de­lib­er­ate in main­tain­ing sta­bil­i­ty, par­tic­u­lar­ly giv­en cur­rent eco­nom­ic con­di­tions. As al­ways, any fu­ture changes would be com­mu­ni­cat­ed clear­ly and in ad­vance,” he added.

RBC Roy­al Bank T&T Ltd al­so ac­knowl­edged cus­tomer con­cerns over bank­ing costs while not­ing that pric­ing re­views are part of stan­dard busi­ness op­er­a­tions.

Marc Jar­dine, vice pres­i­dent com­mer­cial bank­ing and man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Trinidad and To­ba­go, said af­ford­abil­i­ty re­mains a ma­jor is­sue for cus­tomers.

“We un­der­stand that af­ford­abil­i­ty and fi­nan­cial well-be­ing are top of mind for many clients, and we work hard to keep costs down. We reg­u­lar­ly re­view our prod­ucts and ser­vices and some­times ad­just the pric­ing to re­flect the cost of do­ing busi­ness. When we ad­just pric­ing, we no­ti­fy clients in ad­vance to of­fer time to eval­u­ate the changes and dis­cuss any con­cerns with our team,” Jar­dine not­ed.