Your gift counts double until 5/31: $15,989 to go in our Easter Campaign. Please help now!

Vatican officials to meet with Italian bankers on card-transaction freeze

CWN - January 17, 2013

Vatican officials will meet next week with Italian bank-security experts, with a goal of ending a freeze on bank-card transactions inside Vatican City.

The Vatican, which has worked for months to meet European banking standards for preventing money-laundering, was caught off guard by a January 1 announcement that Italy’s central bank would no longer process bank-card transactions from the Vatican. The Vatican hopes to persuade Italian officials that new internal controls have satified the immediate concerns of security officials, and Deutsche Bank—which had handled bank-card transactions inside the Vatican—should be allowed to resume processing those transactions.

The freeze on credit-card and ATM transactions has complicated life for tourists at the Vatican and cut into sales at the Vatican Museums, post office, and other shops. The resort to cash-only business is costing the Vatican an estimated $40,000 a day.

Additional sources for this story
Some links will take you to other sites, in a new window.

An appeal from our founder, Dr. Jeffrey Mirus:

Dear reader: If you found the information on this page helpful in your pursuit of a better Catholic life, please support our work with a donation. Your donation will help us reach five million Truth-seeking readers worldwide this year. Thank you!

Easter Campaign:
Progress toward our Spring 2013 goal ($15,989 to go):
$80,000.00 $64,011.45
20% 80%
Sound Off! CatholicCulture.org supporters weigh in.

All comments are moderated. To lighten our editing burden, only current donors are allowed to Sound Off. If you are a donor, log in to see the comment form; otherwise please support our work, and Sound Off!

There are no comments yet for this item.

Catholic World News Email Newsletter
Donate to Support this Site: Your contribution will be put to good work.
Tour the CatholicCulture.org Site
Shop Amazon to Raise Money for Catholic Culture

Recent Catholic Commentary

Revealing News, and Revealing Christ May 24
The Russell Ford problem May 24
Fr. Thadeus Nguyen Van Ly: Your Letter May Help May 24
The Rise and Fall of the (American?) Church May 23
The Ideal of Pope Francis: the Servant Church May 23

Top Catholic News

Most Important Stories of the Last 30 Days
Pope strongly supports call for reform in religious life CWN - May 8