Here’s something you might not expect: it’s now cheaper for people to get money from non-bank ATMs than it is to withdraw cash from banks they aren’t customers of.
That’s according to Bankrate.com, whose annual survey of bank fees and charges came out today. Here’s what they have to say about bank ATM surcharges:
Slapping a fee on your tab every time you use an ATM that doesn’t belong to your bank is another way banks generate fee income. According to our 2009 Checking Study, this year the average fee leapt 12.6 percent to $2.22. Nearly 99 percent of banks impose a surcharge.
So banks now charge noncustomers an average surcharge of $2.22 for using their ATMs.
Nationally, the average surcharge for non-bank ATMs (the kind you find in gas stations and convenience stores) is about $2.00.
That means if customers can’t find an ATM owned by their bank, they’re better off finding a gas station with an ATM than going to a competing bank. If this trend continues — and there’s every indication it will, as banks continue their longstanding practice of using increased fees as a way to boost revenue — people will get used to seeking out nonbank ATMs as a first resort.
That could end up having an interesting effect on the ATM industry. If people avoid bank ATMs in favor of private ones, banks will start to lose out on surcharge revenue. Which means they’ll have less incentive to expand their ATM networks. Which could lead to a creeping democratization of the ATM industry, as bank networks stagnate and nonbank ATMs make up a larger and larger share of the available machines.
Banks might eventually decide that it makes more economic sense to reimburse customers for using nonbank ATMs than it does to maintain their own fleet of ATMs — a strategy already used by small banks (who can’t afford a big network of machines) and online banks (who don’t have any branches to put ATMs into). With third-party machines increasingly able to handle traditional bank functions like accepting deposits, that scenario gets more feasible with each passing year.
