In our original article ATM Withdrawal Fees and Balance Inquiry Charges by Philippine Banks, we lamented that gone were the days when we can simply use our ATMs without paying any service charge.
These days, it seems the ATM is not anymore a free benefit given to bank customers. Indeed most, if not all, banks now charge clients whenever they use ATMs.
The good thing is, these service charges are still waived whenever clients use their own bank’s ATM. But if the customer decides to use another bank’s machine to do withdrawals or even balance inquiry transactions, the customer may be charged up to P15.00 per transaction.
Recently, several of the country’s biggest banks, including Metrobank (MBT), Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI), Banco de Oro (BDO) and Security Bank (SECB) announced that they are increasing their ATM service charges for withdrawal and balance inquiry transactions.
New ATM withdrawal fees
Metrobank, for example, disclosed that effective October 1, 2013, their cardholders will pay P15.00 whenever they use other banks’ ATM to make a withdrawal. Previously, the charge was P11.00.
Metrobank will not increase the fee charged to customers who withdraw using the ATMs of Philippine Savings Bank. The ATM withdrawal fee, whenever Metrobank clients use PSBank’s ATM, remains at P7.50.
Security Bank, meanwhile, announced that there will be an increase in the withdrawal fee for card holders of Security Bank CashLink, CashCard, GiftCard and its co-branded card variants whenever withdrawals are made from any ATM belonging to other banks. Previously the fee is P10.00 per transaction but will rise to P15.00 per withdrawal effective October 15, 2013.
Banco de Oro (BDO), for their part, will be charging ATM debit and cash cardholders withdrawing through any of the ATMs of BancNet, ExpressNet and MegaLink a fee of P15.00 per transaction starting November 4, 2013.
New Balance Inquiry fees
The Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI), meanwhile, announced that they will hike the Balance Inquiry fee charged to BPI clients whenever they transact using Bancnet, Expressnet or MegaLink ATMs.
The new fee is P2.00 per balance inquiry, up from P1.50 previously.
The increased fee will take effect starting November 2, 2013.
Both banks reiterated that if their clients use the bank’s own ATM for any transaction, no fee will be charged.
With the increase in service charges, we now update our ATM Service Charges table which we posted back in May 2013. This table summarized the ATM withdrawal and balance inquiry fees currently charged by Philippine banks.
ATM Service Charges of Philippine Banks
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UPDATE (September 26, 2013): The Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) ordered banks to indefinitely suspend the implementation of the ATM fee increase. The BSP said further study will be conducted first before a final decision is made to allow banks to increase their ATM fees.
This is good news for now. We wait until the BSP issues the final directive in the future.
