More Australians use their own bank ATMs for withdrawals
It has been reported by the Reserve Bank of Australia that a rising number of Australians are now ensuring that they use their own bank’s ATM to make a cash withdrawal in order to avoid fees.
For many consumers in Australia the ongoing difficult financial climate has made it more important than ever to put a stop to wasting money even if it is only small amounts of cash, which as most people know only too well can quickly add up. One way in which many people have been wasting a lot of money in small amounts is through the charges made by ATMs when they make cash withdrawals from an ATM that is from a rival bank to theirs.
Some financial facilities have been charging consumers two dollars per withdrawal by way of a fee, and for those that make regular withdrawals from these fee charging ATMs this can add up to a tidy sum of wasted cash over the course of the month. However, consumers have become more savvy over these fees since regulations were brought in stating that banks had to declare these charges on screen so that consumers could see what they were being charged for the transaction.
The Reserve Bank of Australia has said that since this regulation was brought in, which was earlier this year, a rising number of Australians have been dodging these two dollar charges by avoiding the ATMs that are charging them. Many consumers are now refusing to use the ATMs of rival banks, preferring instead to use their own bank’s ATM so that they do not get charged for taking money out.
The RBA said: “Before the rules came in, there was about a 60 to 40 per cent split between transactions at customers’ own bank machines and transactions at rivals machines.” However, it added that there had now been an increase of sixty five percent in the number of consumers withdrawing cash from their own bank’s ATM.
Source - Mozo