How much should ATM commissions be? - Tafa: Reducing them will significantly reduce citizens' costs
Recently, the Competition Authority undertook an investigation into the services offered by banks at ATMs. The investigation did not find any anti-competitive practices, however there is a low level of transparency on fees, a lack of harmonisation of fees applied to foreign cardholders, as well as issues related to the use of subcontracted ATM networks.
In an interview with Scan Television, pedagogue Besarta Tafa focused on the commissions that banks currently apply and how high they should be in the future.
"These commissions apply to withdrawals that occur with a card outside the bank's network, meaning not at the bank to which the card belongs. From the latest data, these commissions range from 1% to in some cases higher than 2% or 3%, or in fixed terms they can range from 100 to 300 lek per withdrawal," said Tafa.
According to her, reducing commissions to 50 lek will significantly reduce citizens' costs, but will also increase banks' revenues in the long term.
"Based on the principle of fair cost for financial transactions, as well as on the practices implemented in the region and in European countries, this cost should not exceed 50 lek per withdrawal. This will make it possible to significantly reduce the burden on citizens, on the other hand, this will increase the flow of banking withdrawal activity which in the long term translates into higher income for banks from ATM withdrawal activity, although in the short term, this will bring a reduction in the bank's income from the commission. But in general terms it will increase transparency, as well as make it possible to have fair competition."
The latest data from the Bank of Albania shows that in the first four months of the year, 7.2 million cash withdrawals were made at ATMs and 110,000 for deposits.
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