ATM card holders earlier had the benefit of having five free withdrawals from third party ATMs in a month. But now the number will be down to two for the account holders in the cities. Meanwhile the Reserve Bank of India has asked to continue with the existing facility for the rural ATMs and provide them the details of the number of machines which are in the villages.
The disadvantage here for the ATM users is that if there is no home bank ATM nearby then they will have to pay up to Rs. 20 for withdrawing cash from a third party ATM machine. In recent times the banks have been looking for a cap on free usage and an increase in the fee that they will pay each other for the customers using bank’s ATMs.
Banks argue that the free access is being misused and the account holders have increased their frequency of withdrawals. This causes a loss to the card-issuing bank. Meanwhile the ATM deployers have complained that they are facing an increase in charges after the RBI and policy directives on the new security systems.
For now the fee is capped at Rs. 15 and the ATM deploying banks to increase this. In the past three years the number of ATMs has doubled to 1,62,543 from 74,355.
Photo Credits: Metro journalist
