More than 5 transactions in a month will now become more expensive. From January 1, 2022, customers will now have to pay Rs 21 instead of Rs 20 for every transaction. The Reserve Bank has allowed banks to increase fees. That is, if you cross the limit of free cash or non-cash transactions every month from the ATM, then you will have to pay these charges. However, the RBI said that customers will continue to do five free transactions (including financial and non-financial transactions) every month from their bank’s ATMs. Customers have the facility of three free transactions from other bank’s ATMs in metro cities and five in non-metro cities.
This is the reason for increasing the charge
RBI stated that the charges applicable to customers were revised in August 2014. In such a situation, after examining the recommendations of the committee, it has been decided to increase the interchange fee and customer fee. This decision has been taken keeping in mind the convenience of all stakeholders and consumers along with the ATM deployment cost and maintenance cost on banks and ATM operators. RBI has increased the fee for non-financial transactions from Rs 5 to Rs 6, with effect from August 1, 2021.
In June 2019, RBI had constituted a committee under the chairmanship of VG Kannan, the then President of Indian Banks’ Association, to review the entire gamut of ATM charges. The recommendations of the committee were made public in July 2020. The committee had recommended using population as a metric for computing ATM charges.
