News

Australian parliamentary committee allows flexibility in ATM fees

January 14, 2004

SYDNEY - Bank customers could soon pay more to use a "foreign" ATM in the bush than they would pay in the cities.

According to a report in the Sydney Morning Herald, a federal parliamentary inquiry into financial services in rural and remote areas has opened the door for banks to charge different fees for accessing ATMs in different locations.

While customers currently pay a "foreign" fee when they use an ATM that is not owned by their bank, banks are seeking approval from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to directly charge customers for using an ATM regardless of who owns the machine.

In its Money Matters in the Bush report published on Jan. 14, the Financial Services Joint Parliamentary Committee rejected Labor's call for banks to charge the same ATM access fee, regardless of whether the machine is in the city or the country.

Instead, the committee recommended that banks refrain from imposing "significantly higher" fees on customers using foreign ATMs in regional areas.

Labor accused the committee of supporting the banks' plan for higher ATM fees in the bush, according to the Herald report.

Labor's financial services spokesman, Stephen Conroy called the committee's actions "an open invitation for the banks to gorge themselves on a new source of fee revenue at the expense of customers in rural and regional Australia."

Labor said the banks had closed more than 750 branches in rural and regional areas over the past decade.

But Liberal senator Grant Chapman, the committee's chairman, said he did not think banks would charge more for customers to use ATMs in regional areas. "I don't think the banks could wear the community opprobrium which would descend on them," he said.

Chapman said some independent ATM operators could charge more, to recoup their costs of providing machines in remote areas.

According to the Herald, the committee has recommended banks educated their older and indigenous customers to ensure they could use phone and Internet banking. It has also recommended banks stimulate economies in the bush, by providing loans and investment capital.