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State Banks to Drop ATM Fees

State banks are prepared for free use of all pooled ATMs by the end of this month in order to allow people easy access to their financial resources.

This joint project by state banks will also pressure commercial banks to reduce ATM-related fees as well.

Finance Ministry Permanent Secretary Areepong Pucha-um disclosed that the ministry will introduce its financial institute joint project which will allow customers to deposit, withdraw and transfer funds via automatic teller machines at no cost.

The four state financial institutions are Government Savings Bank, Government Housing Bank, Bank for Agriculture and Agricultural Co-operatives and the Islamic Bank of Thailand.

The Government Savings Bank will lead this financial joint project since it has 1,500 ATMs, the highest number among the participating banks, and it has plans to expand the number of ATMs to 2,000 by the end of this year.

Meanwhile, three other state banks plan to link their ATMs in order to allow their customers free use, starting in June and running through December this year.

After that, the banks will evaluate the situation and determine whether they will permanently charge ATM-related fees or not.

Areepong further stated that this joint financial project by these four state banks will help reduce their overall banking costs. The banks will not need to have any duplicate ATM.

Customers of these state banks will be able to use any bank's ATM at no cost as well.

As customers will have to pay higher fees to use ATM services provided by commercial banks, this joint project will not only help reduce customers’ banking expenses, but it will also attract more customers to the state banks as well.

Areepong went on to say that Finance Minister Korn Jatikavanich previously requested that all commercial banks reduce their ATM fees but so far only a few banks have cooperated.

Areepong said this joint project by the state banks will eventually make commercial banks reduce or waive ATM-related fees in order to keep their existing customers.

-- Tan Network 2011-05-18

[Lorin]

Amazing Thailand? What is the catch...

[MaiChai]

What about the 150baht charge for foreign cards? Is this still to be charged?

[CHANGOVER]

What about the 150baht charge for foreign cards? Is this still to be charged?

Hopefully Aeon will still not charge the 150!

[Langsuan Man]

I am sure that the 150 THB fee for foreign ATM cards will not be effected

The cynic in me sees this as being a political ploy on the part of the current ruling party to please the electorate

[jfchandler]

This policy change is aimed at the much smaller ATM fees that Thai banks charge customers when they try to use a card from a different Thai bank more than a few times per month.

It will be interesting to see, though, if the change has any collateral affect on the farang 150 baht fee. I say this because Government Savings Bank ATMs do accept VISA and MC logo card, apart from Thai ATM pool logo cards. And GSB was one of the last Thai banks to implement the 150 baht fee...

I suppose it's possible, when they discontinue the local ATM charges, that the farang fee might get lumped in incidentally.... I'm not holding out great hope for that.. But it would be worth checking once the policy change takes effect in a month or so.

Some of the other government banks, as best as I recall, have ATMs that do not take regular VISA and MC logo cards, but do take Thai ATM Pool logo cards.