Information Madness

You may have noticed that when you use debit card from one back at the ATM machine of some other bank, bank charges up to Rs 57 for withdrawals and upto Rs. 20 for balance inquiry. Currently, the number of ATMs deployed in India stood at 31,078.

RBI said data collected from various banks indicate that generally the aggregate inter-change fee and ATM switching charges per transaction range from Rs 10 to Rs 20 for cash withdrawal and Rs 5 to Rs 8 for balance enquiry. But here is the good news. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has suggested that customers of one bank be allowed free use of ATMs of other banks, including for cash withdrawal, from April 1, 2009.
 

For withdrawal of cash from ATMs of other banks, RBI wants banks to cap charges at the rates prevailing as on December 23, 2007, to reduce all charges to a maximum of Rs 20 per transaction from up to Rs 55 charged now from March 31, 2008 (via: Rediff)