A claim has been doing rounds on social media platforms and messaging apps like WhatsApp that ₹173 will be deducted for more than 4 withdrawals from ATM. According to the viral claim, a tax of ₹150 along with a service fee of ₹23 will be levied after the four withdrawals from ATM in a month.
“Why don't you (government) stab the public in one go? tax on earnings, tax on savings, tax on bank deposits and tax on withdrawal (Request all of you, forward it) Do not sit silently and bear it,” a message loosely translated from Hindi reads.
An RBI circular issued in June last year says that customers are eligible for five free financial and non-financial transactions every month from their own bank ATMs. They are also eligible for free transactions from other bank ATMs in metro centres and five transactions in non-metro centres. Beyond the free transactions, the RBI had earlier put a cap on customer charges at ₹20 per transaction, which means banks could not charge more than ₹20 for each transaction exceeding the monthly limit.
Given the increasing cost of ATM deployment and expenses towards ATM maintenance incurred by banks / white label ATM operators, and the need to balance expectations of stakeholder entities and customer convenience, RBI decided to revise the transaction fee.
{{/usCountry}}Given the increasing cost of ATM deployment and expenses towards ATM maintenance incurred by banks / white label ATM operators, and the need to balance expectations of stakeholder entities and customer convenience, RBI decided to revise the transaction fee.
{{/usCountry}}“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 ₹21 per transaction. This increase shall be effective from January 1, 2022.,” the circular reads.
This means the banks cannot charge more than ₹21 per transaction exceeding the monthly limit.
So the viral claim is false.