Germany’s bank lobby group BdB has urged the European Central Bank to lower the charge that banks pay on some of their excess cash by introducing a tiered deposit rate.

“If the ECB is unable to end the era of negative interest rates this year, then it should at least take the central banks in Switzerland and Japan as a model,” said BdB president Hans-Walter Peters.

Interest rates in Japan and Switzerland are also negative, but banks are exempted from paying the central banks for parking cash up to a certain volume. “The allowance must come now,” Peters said.