ATM transactions to cost more from Aug 1

Mumbai: From August 1 onwards, banks will increase the interchange fee per transaction at ATMs to Rs 17 from Rs 15 for financial transactions and from Rs 5 to Rs 6 for non-financial transactions in all centres, an RBI statement said.

The Reserve Bank of India had constituted a committee in June 2019 under the Chairmanship of the Chief Executive, Indian Banks' Association to review the entire gamut of Automated Teller Machine (ATM) charges and fees with particular focus on interchange structure for ATM transactions.

The recommendations of the committee have been comprehensively examined. It is also observed that the last change in interchange fee structure for ATM transactions was in August 2012, while the charges payable by customers were last revised in August 2014.

A substantial time has thus elapsed since these fees were last changed. Accordingly, given the increasing cost of ATM deployment and expenses towards ATM maintenance incurred by banks / white label ATM operators, as also considering the need to balance expectations of stakeholder entities and customer convenience.

Talking to Bizz Buzz on condition of anonymity a former MD of SBI said, "The banks had been representing to RBI for quite some time that the rates fixed earlier by the apex bank for this was out of their pocket and hence it was operationally becoming unviable."