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ANZ Banking Group will stop charging its customers for using ATMs operated by competitors, a spokesperson for the Australia-based bank tells CardLine Global. The move comes as Australia's new rules for ATM fees went into effect Tuesday. Under changes imposed by the Reserve Bank of Australia, ATM owners now can charge users of their machines directly instead of collecting those fees through their 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. ANZ will stop charging its customers a foreign-ATM fee of AU$2 (US$1.30 or 1 euro) when they use other owners' machines. The bank deploys 2,500 ATMs, the spokesperson says. The bank still assesses a AU$2 surcharge to noncustomers who use the bank's ATMs, the spokesperson says. "Our changes are in the spirit of the Reserve Bank's request to financial institutions to make ATM fees more transparent," the spokesperson says. ANZ's fee change should boost customer loyalty, Joshua Zenas, a financial analyst for Australia-based Canstar Cannex, tells CardLine Global. Zenas did not know if other banks would follow ANZ's lead.
