ATM fees at pubs and clubs are going up
It’s a piece of bad news for anyone caught short at the pub.
While everyone is celebrating banks removing those pesky $2 ATM fees for customers, it won’t be the same story at pubs and clubs around the country.
The American owners of Australia’s biggest ATM network is expected to raise its fees.
There’s a simple reason for that: they can.
The ATM owners know that anyone caught short is unlikely to rush out from the pub to find an ATM belonging to their bank just to save $2.
One of them is US-owned Cardtronics. It has a network of 10,200 ATMS in Australia.
Just to put that in perspective, that’s three times more ATM machines than the Commonwealth Bank of Australia which was the first of the big four to dump the fees.
Cardtronics ATMs charge punters at least $2.75. The Cardtronics machines generate $138 million annually.
Put another way, that’s $13,500 per machine.
Cardtronics was saying nothing to the media last week about its plans.
Banktech, which owns 2700 machines nationally, said it isn’t doing anything about the ATM fees yet.
It is waiting to see what the full effect will be on the banks.
But Australia’s second biggest independent operator, Stargroup, says fees will have to rise.
The increase in fees will compensate for the fall in volume.
Bigger fees will also offset increasing technology and cash-transit costs.
“I think medium to long-term, prices will go up,” Todd Zani, CEO of Perth-based Stargroup, which has 2300 ATMs told News Corp Australia.
The bottom line, according to Zani, is that people are “prepared to pay for convenience.”
To demonstrate that point, he cited a trial the company ran last year which saw it upping its charges by $1 to $3.50 at seven locations.
And people didn’t care, he said.
“It had zero impact,” he told News Corp Australia.
by Leon Gettler, October 3rd 2017
