More than 30 commercial banks and over a dozen credit institutions are involved in a tight competition to collect billions of dollars in cash, which are in the hands of nearly 80 million Iranians. Previously, the most effective tool the financial institutions used to attract cash from savers was a generous offer of an interest rate of around 27%. That is considered illegal now. Earlier, the Central Bank of Iran (CBI) and CEOs of commercial banks reached an agreement that the institutions should not offer a deposit rate of more than 22%. The agreed ceiling, however, has been violated in many cases.

On Feb. 23, Abbas Kamrei, a board member of Bank Melli, the largest state-run commercial bank, criticized CBI's interest rate policy as incorrect. He said any change in the deposit rate ceiling must be made in such a way that "both markets' stability and savers' trust remain unhurt."

Monetary officials claim that they are not going to dictate interest rates, but in practice they have been pressurizing banks and credit institutions to cut deposit and loan rates in accordance with inflation, which has been on a downward trend since the fourth quarter of 2013.

The CBI has focused on restricting the monetary base and raising profit rates on participatory loans to curb inflation over the past 18 months. The policy has been a successful attempt as inflation dropped from 34.7% in the year up to March 20, 2013, to 15.8% in the year up to Feb. 20, 2015, according to CBI data.