Five free transactions a month; later Rs. 21 will be deducted per transaction

New Delhi: According to the latest announcement by Reserve Bank of India (RBI), the cash withdrawal charges on ATMs will be slightly heavier on the pockets of users if they surpass the monthly limit of free transactions on their debit or credit cards.

The RBI in June had announced that the banks in the country are now allowed to increase the charges for cash and non-cash ATM transactions beyond the free monthly permissible limit for the users. This change in the rates will come into effect from January 1, 2022.

The RBI, in a circular, issued earlier, said, “To compensate the banks for the higher interchange fee and given the general escalation in costs, they are allowed to increase the customer charges to Rs. 21 per transaction. This increase shall be effective from January 1, 2022.”

In accordance with the circular issued by RBI earlier this year, customers at ATMs will now have to pay Rs. 21 per transaction, instead of Rs. 20, with effect from January 1, 2022. This amount will be charged to customers if they exceed the limit of monthly free transactions.

Even though the transaction charges have been hiked, customers will continue to be eligible for five free transactions (inclusive of financial and non-financial transactions) every month from their own bank ATMs.

Apart from this, customers will also be able to avail three free transactions from other bank ATMs in metro centres and five transactions in non-metro centres. RBI has also allowed central banks to raise the interchange fees per transaction from Rs. 15 to Rs. 17 per financial transaction and from Rs. 5 to Rs. 6 for non-financial transactions.

These changes in the ATM withdrawal charges have come into effect as there has been an increase in the cost of ATM deployments expenses towards ATM maintenance incurred by banks/ white label ATM operators. The need to balance the expectations of the stakeholders has also increased over the past few months.