Bankers’ Committee Scraps N100 ATM Charges

Deposit Money Banks (DMBs) have agreed to waive the N100 charge imposed on Automated Teller Machine (ATM) transactions across banks,B isi Onasanya, group managing director of FirstBank, said after the Bankers’ Committee meeting in Abuja last night.

“We have decided that with immediate effect, we will develop modalities to send those charges to the respective banks. We will bore the charges so that no matter where you are drawing money from you would not be subjected to any charges,” Onasanya announced the decision of the committee.

However this does not cover the charges inside the bank.

He explained “this does not cover withdrawals from inside the banking halls. For customers of FirstBank to use the ATM of GTBank is free; you no longer have to bear any cost,” he said.

Onasanya said the banks have been directed to go back to the drawing board and take a decision as to how this cost will be borne by them. He said: “We need to understand that these services have some inherent costs. What we have just decided is that banks will no longer be passing this cost to their customers.

“What we need to do now is work out the modalities, and it should be in a very short period of time because we are all committed to it and it was a unanimous decision of the bankers committee.” He added that the decision to stop charging customers for using ATMs, borders on the need for banks to follow the global trend.

He said in some parts of the world, when you use your card on most of the ATM networks, you don’t have a charge, stating that although there were costs involved in doing this, the Bankers’ Committee agreed “to give back to the society some form of what we benefited from the system”.

The lenders he said that felt that since they are doing well, they need to encourage the rest of the community to be part of the success story. So we felt that we should be able to bear the cost as a way of cushioning the impact of whatever the situation is in the economy today,” he added.

The burden of this decision and the cost implication that the banks are carrying he lamented “are not low but as responsible corporate citizens we do not want to pass this cost on to the public, we will bear the cost,” he said.

Also , Mrs. Agnes Olatokumbo, director of Banking Supervision, Central Bank of Nigeria said at the press briefing that the central bank will be working with the Securities and Exchange Commission to supervise and monitor the stock broking firms, especially those that are owned by Holding companies under the new banking reforms.

She said this is to maintain financial stability.

The bankers also said that they want to support mortgage facilities to civil servants and other people to help them get houses of their own at affordable rates.

The bankers said they are also looking at how they can donate to the victims of flood