NEW! RBI ATM rules ALERT! These 5 important things to impact your daily cash, non-cash transactions

The Reserve Bank of India has made some big changes in the Automated Teller Machine (ATM) rules. So, what are these changes, and how it is going to affect your daily transaction activities? Are these changes going to put an extra burden on your pockets? Here are the 5 big changes that RBI has made and you must know them.  

1) Interchange fee
RBI has allowed an increase in 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 shall be effective from August 1, 2021.

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2) Free monthly permissible limit
RBI has now allowed banks to increase charges for cash and non-cash ATM transactions beyond the free monthly permissible limit from next year. The Central Bank 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."  

3) Rs 21 per transaction
Bank customers will have to pay Rs 21 per transaction, which was Rs 20 earlier, with effect from January 1, 2022, if they exceed the monthly limit of free transactions.
"The increasing cost of ATM deployment and expenses towards ATM maintenance incurred by banks/ white label ATM operators, as also considering the need to balance expectations of stakeholder entities and customer convenience," RBI stated.

4) 5 free transactions
Customers are eligible for five free transactions; this is inclusive of financial and non-financial transactions every month from their own bank ATMs.

5) Rs 20 per transaction
Beyond the free transactions, the ceiling on customer charges is Rs 20 per transaction, as prescribed vide circular dated August 14, 2014.

The Central Bank said, "It is 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." These instructions shall also apply, mutatis mutandis, to transactions done at Cash Recycler Machines, other than for cash deposit transactions, RBI said.

The Central bank had set up a committee in June 2019 under the chairmanship of the chief executive of the Indian Banks’ Association to review the entire gamut of ATM charges and fees with a particular focus on interchange structure for ATM transactions.