ATM Rules Revised: Banks to increase charges From 1 Jan

Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has notified the increase in charges for making cash and non-cash transactions from (Automated Teller Machine) ATM, effective from 1 January 2022.

As per the new rules, the banks are allowed to increase the customer charges from Rs 20 to Rs 21 per transaction. Customers will have to pay the same if they exceed the free ATM transaction limit.

Customers are eligible for five free transactions (inclusive of financial and non-financial transactions) every month from their own bank ATMs. They can also make three free transactions from other bank ATMs in Metro centres and five free transaction non-Metro centres.

Apart from this RBI has also allowed the banks to increase interchange fee per transaction from Rs 15 to Rs 17 for financial transactions and from Rs 5 to Rs 6 for non-financial transactions in all centres. This will be effective from 1 August 2021.

The decision was taken based on recommendations of a committee constituted by RBI in 2019. The central bank also observed that the last change in interchange fee structure for ATM transactions was in August 2012 while the charges payable by customers were last revised in August 2014.

Therefore, in the wake of the increasing costs of ATM deployment and expenses towards ATM maintenance incurred by banks and white label ATM operators, RBI decided to revise the charges.