Data from the central bank shows that Australians have $47 billion in credit card debt however there has been little appetite among the big four to grant customers relief from the high margin offerings.

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg is calling on other banks to follow CBA's lead to provide credit card fee waivers to borrowers struggling from the coronavirus economic downturn.

Mr Frydenberg in recent days helped hatch a plan with CBA chief executive Matt Comyn to provide enhanced help to borrowers.

“Following discussions with the CBA we welcome their announcement to automatically refund late fees and interest for the month of March for their credit card customers," Mr Frydenberg said.

“I now look forward to hearing from other banks to hear what relief they can provide to their customers at this time.”

Banks have been reluctant to extend the moratorium on debt repayments to credit cards with ANZ boss Shayne Elliott saying on radio as recently as last week the bank was looking at it but home owners remained the priority.


"Just to give you the numbers at ANZ, we've got almost $300 billion of home loans and our total credit card book including personal loans is about $7 billion," Mr Elliott said last Thursday.

"What we don't want to do is encourage people to take on even more credit. If we make it too cheap and people keep running up debt, that's not the right thing to do. People shouldn't be living their lives using their credit cards to buy groceries."

The announcement from CBA followed the news it will also not charge “interest on interest”, for mortgage holders who take up the bank’s earlier offer to defer home loan repayments – principal and interest – for up to six months.

The deferred repayments will still be added to future repayments, but the bank will not compound the extra interest. For a customer with an average loan of $350,000, it will save them about $45.

“To support more Australians, we will make a one-time payment to all customers who are receiving a home loan deferral because of the coronavirus,” CBA’s Mr Sullivan said.

About 50,000 CBA home loan customers have deferred their mortgage repayments.