Inflation, bank style

I just discovered that non-CBA ATM withdrawals now cost $2.00. This is up from $1.50 since February 19, from what I can see.

A 30 percent rise in inflation for an artificial “transaction” expense? More like plain pilfering to me.

With the bank’s infrastructure already written down you’re telling me it “costs” the bank more to process a transaction via another financial institution’s ATM than one of its own? I highly doubt it. If anything it should cost less as you are using a competitor’s infrastructure ;-).

Next we’ll be charged a percentage of the value of the transaction. Hey banks, people that work in IT know it doesn’t cost you any more to process a $1 transaction than it does to process a $1 billion transaction.

I wonder how long the market will put up with transaction fees, all for the privilege of having some greedy bank earn interest on, and invest, customers’ money.

About the author

IANAE! (I am not an epidemiologist)

Comments

  1. Stay away from the big 4 and you should be right. Mines about 30c from anywhere once you go over your n per month, because they don’t have any ATMs outside this region.

  2. The banks cross-bill each other: so CBA customers use St George equipment, and St George sends a charge to CBA who pass that charge on to their customers (with markup). Then St George customers use CBA equipment and CBA charges St George who passes the charge back to their customers.

    The banks end up coming out even with each other, but the customers end up poorer. May I suggest that CBA shares are selling at a relative discount (compared to 6 months ago) so if you have spare cash and want to invest in getting back some of your own money then buying CBA shares and collecting the dividends might be one option (don’t forget to pay your tax on those dividends).

    Yeah, and they offer about 0.000001% interest on a “savings” account while charging over 9% on loans and 20% on credit cards.

    One of those things in life… you need a good scam to get ahead, but all the best scams have already been taken!

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