Does the operation fees for atm machines go to the atm machine's bank or the debit card holder's bank?

[edjlopez23]

Does the operation fees for atm machines go to the atm machine’s bank or the debit card holder’s bank? Just want to know for personal reasons.

 

[UpUpAndAway]

I live in Europe. If you don’t, this response may be irrelevant to you.

When my use of a particular ATM might incur fees, I get an on-screen message that says something along the lines of “your bank may charge you for using this machine” and asks me if it’s okay to continue. So if I proceed, it’s my own bank that charges me the fees and I agree to this.

Whether my bank subsequently funnels at least part of the fees collected back to the ATM’s owner, that I couldn’t tell you.

I imagine that different situations could exist depending upon the established relationship (or lack thereof) between the two institutions involved, your bank/card issuer and the owner of the ATM.

 

[edjlopez23]

So your saying its the bank on the debit card is the one that collects the operation fees.

 

[UpUpAndAway]

I’m saying that in my case as described above, the bank that issued my card collected fees from me. They were deducted from my account. What happened to these fees after they were deducted from my account, specifically whether or not my bank then paid any percentage of the fees back to the entity that owns the ATM I used, I cannot tell you. I don’t know.

YMMV.

 

[Mary888]

It depends. Usually if there are fees involved you pay for them, not the bank. Some banks offer fee-free usage of ATM if your debit card collects your monthly payment, thus aiming to get more firms to make business with them.
If my bank does not advertise the fee-free withdrawal I just presume that I will be taxed for withdrawing money and bet on that.
The only one who can answer this is the bank who issued your card. You can check their site for the Q&A section and if you don’t find your answer there just email them and ask them about the fees involved in withdrawal from ATMs.

 

[whatistrue]

It varies widely by bank, ATM owner, location, etc. There is no single correct answer.

For example, in the USA it is not uncommon for a small store or restaurant to contract with a company to place an ATM on the premises for the “convenience” of their customers. In such a case, a fairly normal, but not universal, result is that the company that owns the ATM (not necessarily a bank and not usually the business that it is located inside) will charge a fee to use that ATM. In some cases, the customer’s bank will charge a separate fee for the use of an “out of network” ATM. In that case, both entities charge the customer. And there are variations from that all the way to no charge for the transaction at all, depending on who owns the ATM and which bank the customer does business with - sometimes even in random stores the ATM can be owned by the customer’s home bank.