IMGCAP(1)]
Customers Ltd. has seen a drop off in the use of its cash machines in the wake of ATM-fee reforms, according to The Australian newspaper. The Australia-based ATM owner and operator has experienced a 12% drop in transactions since the Reserve Bank of Australia introduced the reforms earlier this month, the newspaper reports. The company did not disclose specific transaction data or the average transaction amount, and company officials did not respond to CardLine Global requests for comment. The firm deploys more than 5,000 ATMs. The new ATM-fee laws, mandated by the Reserve Bank of Australia, allow ATM owners to charge users of their machines directly instead of collecting those fees through card issuers, which could pass along costs to their cardholders and impose their own fees. The new rules also require ATM operators to be more transparent about their fees. Several financial institutions, including ANZ Banking Group, have said they would stop charging their customers foreign-ATM fees for using other deployers' ATMs (CardLine Global, 5 March). The new rules have caused consumers to be more cautious about using ATMs, an analyst tells CardLine Global. "The decrease in ATM [use] is due to the increased transparency alerting people to how much they are being charged," Peter Arnold, a financial analyst for Australia-based Canstar Cannex Pty Ltd., tells CardLine Global. "The majority of ATMs still have a similar fee, but now these fees are shown clearly, so people think twice about whether or not the want to pay them."
