Mumbai: The number of free withdrawals from other bank ATMs is soon set to come down from five a month to two for account holders in cities. The highest authority Reserve Bank of India has also asked the banks to keep the current system going in rural areas and give them details of the ATMs and areas.
The bad part of the decision is, if the consumers have taken two free withdrawals from a third party bank and do not have a company ATM nearby, they will have to pay Rs 20 as a charge to take out the cash.
It is believed that the banks have been talking on the free usages and that the fee that they are supposed to pay each other for the customers using other ATMS than their ATM. Their argument still lies as the free access is being tainted and that the ATM holders have raised their frequency of withdrawals.
The present fee decided is Rs 15 but the Banks are fighting to increase the sum to Rs 20. Nevertheless, other banks which depend on bank’s ATM, end up paying fee to the other banks are now wanting the fee to be only Rs 15 and not more than that. Sources have said that the interbank interchange fee will go up by 10 percent.
A company executive of a bank when asked about the same said, “From the customer point of view, the existing regime should continue. For the market to develop the freedom of ATM operators — including white-label ATM operators — should not be restricted and price points should not be dictated by inter-bank interchange charges.”
The history reveals that access to a third party ATM was made free in April 2009 and they ended up paying Rs 18 to other banks for each withdrawal. RBI then agreed to put a fee after five withdrawals and made a limit of Rs 10,000 from other bank ATMs. There is also a rush in creating third party ATMs i.e. companies make ATMs for the banks and pickup rent on a monthly basis. In past few years the number of ATMs have moved up at a much higher pitch than before from 74,00 to more than a lakh.
No comments:
Post a Comment