ATMs continue to be as good at taking our money as they are at giving it. And no, we don’t mean deposits. Cash machine fees rose for the 10th consecutive time this year, reaching a record average of $4.57, according to Bankrate.
Withdrawing money from an out-of-network ATM usually results in two different fees – one from your bank and one from the bank that owns the ATM. Both of these fees have reached a new high this year.
This year, banks charged non-customers an average of $2.90 to withdraw their money – up from $2.88 last year. This is the 12th consecutive year this fee has gone up. The average fee imposed by banks on their customers for using an ATM that does not belong to the bank also went up to $1.67 from $1.64 a year ago. It is the 10th year that the two fees combined have risen.
Survey: Out-of-network ATM fees keep hitting record highs https://t.co/jOQUZX0neY #banking pic.twitter.com/FDfuD23951
— Bankrate (@Bankrate) October 4, 2016
In 1998, banks charged on average $0.89 for non-customer withdrawals and $1.08 for withdrawals made on out-of-network ATMs, meaning that since 1998, ATM fees have gone up by almost 132%. The increase has not gone unnoticed.
“In my view, it is unacceptable that Americans are paying a $4 or $5 fee each time they go to the ATM,” Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont said earlier this year when he was still running for US president. One of his campaign proposals was capping ATM fees at $2.
“People should not have to pay a 10% fee for withdrawing $40 of their own money out of an ATM,” he tweeted in January.
We must also cap ATM fees at $2.00. People should not have to pay a 10 percent fee for withdrawing $40 of their own money out of an ATM.
— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) January 10, 2016
Hillary Clinton also described ATM fees as unfair last year when she appeared on the Late Show with Stephen Colbert. In the interview, Clinton said if she were elected president she would not bail banks out if they were to fail. If they got too big to manage and were failing, they would be broken up, she insisted.
“Can you at least just get back from them the $3 they charge us to take $20 out of an ATM machine?” asked Colbert.
“You know what, we need to go after that too. Don’t you think?” Clinton said to scattered applause. “Yeah, that’s usurious.”
Thanks to these fees, ATMs are a profitable business for banks. An analysis by SNL Financial and CNN Money found that three biggest US banks – JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo – made more than $6bn from ATM and overdraft fees last year.
There is some good news in the world of bank fees, however. The Bankrate survey found that average overdraft fees actually went down this year.
“The average overdraft fee has been increasing year in and year out for 17 consecutive years and that streak has been broken this year,” said Greg McBride, Bankrate’s senior vice-president and chief financial analyst. “I think it’s too early to say that we’ve reached the peak, particularly because we have seen more increases than decreases [among banks surveyed].”
Bankrate’s findings are based on information provided by 10 banks from July to August this year.
