Bank of Maldives (BML) today placed a limit on the number of monthly transactions allowed on several foreign e-commerce sites commonly used by Maldivians.

At a press conference held by BML, the bank’s CEO and Managing Director, Mohamed Shareef, stated that some individuals are using MVR cards, issued for personal use, to purchase goods from certain online shopping sites in very high volumes for commercial purposes.

"As a result, the bank is selling a large amount of foreign currency for this purpose to a relatively small number of people," Shareef said.

Due to the high dollar expenditure on such sites, BML had previously decided to implement a 30 percent fee on each transaction made on Temu, Shein, Alibaba, AliExpress, Lazada, and eBay.

Shareef explained that in order to sell the foreign currency available to the bank to more people for their needs, it has been decided to sell the total amount for shopping on these sites within a daily allocated budget.

"Therefore, in order to ensure that the budget allocated for e-commerce is used as fairly as possible, the number of e-commerce transactions allowed per customer per month has been set at 30," he said.

However, Shareef noted that for the time being, no changes have been made to sites used for other purposes, and they can continue to be used at current levels.

Furthermore, the "foreign spend limit" used at POS and ATMs abroad has been adjusted so that it only becomes active when the user is physically outside the Maldives.

"Consequently, this will ensure that cards belonging to those residing in Maldives cannot be taken abroad and used without the cardholder being present," Shareef said.