In North America, using your card in an ATM other than one owned by your bank will usually cost you bank fees from the ATM’s bank, and sometimes also from your own bank. In the UK, on the other hand, all the major banks have agreements with each other not to issue such charges. It’s usually only private ATMs which charge a transaction fee.
What exactly is different between the US and Canadian personal banking markets, on the one hand, and that of the UK, on the other hand, which allows the former to get away with these transaction fees while the latter dispenses with them?
This from Wikipedia: United Kingdom
Public reaction to proposed increases in fees was so strong in 1999 after a campaign launched by Nationwide Building Society and the UK tabloid newspapers that fees were removed altogether for using ATMs at banks, regardless of whether the user is a customer of that bank.[11][12] However, each time a bank’s customer uses a rival bank’s ATM, the customer’s bank has to pay a fee to the rival bank, which the customer’s bank absorbs.[13]
So it sounds like People Power! I’d be surprised if the government hadn’t floated the idea of legislative remedies to the perceived injustice, even if only in off the record discussions with the banks.
I’m not sure the regulatory framework or overriding view of government involvement in the banking industry in the US would allow a similar strategy. After all banks pretty much make money either from interest rate margins or fees. If they have one revenue stream hobbled, they’ll just turn to the other. No one likes interest rate increases, and the ATM interbank fee is pretty much the definition of an avoidable user-pays fee.
In the US credit unions sometimes allow you to use other credit union ATMs for free. Here in NC the state employees credit union is very big and I use their ATMs all the time for free, I belong to a different CU. They have way more ATMs than my CU does.
I think my old bank allowed up to 5 non-network transactions a month with no fees. I think it’s just an easy way for banks to make some money, and a way people won’t really complain too much about. (Unlike overdraft fees, which can range from 30 to 40 dollars per occourance)
The banks charge like wounded Rhinos to use other banks’ ATMs here in Australia. Small banks and Credit/Building Societies often have an agreement with a bigger bank to let you use their ATMs for free as well, but if you’re, say, a Westpac customer and you want to use a National Australia Bank ATM it will cost you.
There’s also a proposed legislation change afoot to let “independent” ATM operators (ATMs not affiliated with any bank; often found in IGAs and Services/Leagues clubs and so on) charge different fees at different times- the concern being the fees will skyrocket later in the evening when people who have been out for a few drinks want to get some cash out from the ATM to pay for a taxi home, for example.
As BACI suggests, I think it has more to do with British retail banks being slow off the mark in charging for usage, and having to face public pressure not to do it - possibly the same reason that paying fees for just having a bank account has been very slow to take off (and tends to be reserved for “premium” bank accounts).
If you want money the easy way to get it without ATM fees is go to a grocery store and buy something with a debit card and just get cash back. You can probably buy something you want or need anyway. Or just buy something that costs 50 cents like cheap candy.
Lots of places (typically corner stores and newsagents and places like that) in Australia have a minimum purchase- usually $10- so that their isn’t just used as an ATM by all and sundry. The banks charge the merchant for each EFTPOS transaction, and on a small sale those fees can make the transaction unprofitable for the merchant.
But otherwise yes, getting cash out via EFTPOS is a very useful way to avoid “Other Bank” fees.
Never seen a US grocery store with a minimum purchase for credit or debit cards. Seen a few small places with a $5 min, normally they are fast food places but they don’t give cash back. Also here small places like 7-11 don’t give cash back as far as I know.
I have only done cash back in grocery stores or places like Target and WalMart.
Minimum purchases are actually a violation of the merchant agreement with Visa and Mastercard. I just wish I knew a reliable way to report such problems, because they irritate me to death. I don’t carry cash. Refusing to take my card for a transaction results in a lost transaction.
I’ve had problems with doing the cash back thing as well. Most recently in a Rite Aid, they had only just opened for the day and the cashier was really nasty in telling me that she didn’t have $20 in the till to give me. I asked what she would have done if I had wanted to pay for my $7 worth of merchandise with a $50 bill and she smugly said “I wouldn’t have taken it.” So apparently Rite Aid gives their cashiers insufficient change to start their days, it’s something I had to make a mental note of. (Oh well, I always liked Walgreen’s better anyway.)