PRESS RELEASE FROM THE CENTRAL BANK OF ICELAND:
The importance of smoothly functioning cross-border payment intermediation through Iceland’s commercial banks is apparent to all. Because of the difficulties with cross-border payments in the past few weeks, the Central Bank has decided to act as an intermediary in instances where other channels were closed.
The Bank has also declared that it will guarantee that all payments routed through the Central Bank’s accounts to accounts in domestic credit institutions will be delivered to the account owners in those credit institutions. Those parties who expect payments from foreign countries must therefore ensure that the payor receives new information on payment routing. Payment instructions for all currencies that the Central Bank can receive can be found here (PDF file, updated October 30, 2008). Before providing the payor with the instructions, the party requesting payment must fill out the fields indicated in red in this document. The name of the recipient should follow the words “Final beneficiary” (line 6), and the IBAN number of the recipient’s bank account must be added in the field immediately below it (line 7).
>Will U.S. issued credit cards continue to function for purchases in Iceland?
Yes of course, but you should check what the exchange rate that you will be charged. If you are lucky it maybe considerably better than the local rate.
Yes. There have been no reports of that sort of problem here (or elsewhere, that I’ve seen).
From what I’ve read, you’ll even get a better rate than you might have expected when you budgeted, although it’ll probably be the official rate rather than the market rate.
Will U.S. issued credit cards continue to function for purchases in Iceland?
I have been told to make a final payment of Equity Release to Landsbanki.lu via a bank in Denmark and the benificiary name is my own while your article says that payments for the banks should be made through the central bank only. Surely Landsbanki is following directions from De Loitte who are governing Landsbanki.lu I should think that being a Luxembourg branch might be the reason.
With best regards,
Jocelyn Meeks
Spain Equity Release fiasco