Glossary

ATM Interchange Fee

There are fees attached to withdrawing money from an ATM. The fact of the matter is that those who operate the ATM’s have to make a profit for themselves as well. These fees are frequently part of the cost of doing business for the banks as well. The banks charge a fee to the ATM operators who in turn charge a fee to the users of the ATM.

The fees generated by these machines are relatively small. Those who are withdrawing large sums of money in particular get away with only being charged a small percentage of what they are withdrawing. However, they do in fact still have to pay those fees in order for the system to work.

When one goes to an ATM, they are making a request from their bank to have cash in hand without having to enter a physical banking location. Often, ATMs of the particular bank that one does business with will not charge their own customers a fee to use those ATMs. Since those ATMs are considered part of the bank itself and therefore there is no need to charge a fee for that.

ATM fees are an essential part of keeping the financial system operating. ATM operators would not be in the business that they are in if not for the fees that they collect. That is why those who decide to use these machines that are not within their banking system must pay the credit card processing fees associated with them.

Those credit card processing fees are collected in a merchant account that the ATM owner can withdraw from at a later date. The merchant account is the place where the fees are stored in order for the operator of the ATM to keep them safe.

Though they may be annoying in some sense to the users of ATMs, the fees generated are the only reason such machines exist. We have to pay for the fact that we are able to use these machines no matter where we are in the world. If we want the easy of getting money when we need it, we have to pay the small fees to do so.