UK: Regulator deepens investigation over ATM fees

The Payment Systems Regulator (PSR) has published a letter sent by it to the Chair of the Treasury Select Committee regarding the UK’s ATM network.

The letter sets out the PSR’s continued commitment to ensuring access to “free to use” ATMs, and describes its ongoing program of work on the ATMs network. The letter also describes two studies commissioned by the PSR into access, demand and competition issues: summaries of these studies are published on the PRS’s ATM page.

The regulator, which oversees the UK’s £81 trillion (US$111 trillion) payments industry, has published two independent studies in response to concerns voiced by Nicky Morgan, chairwoman of Parliament’s Treasury Committee, that fee cuts and growing competition among ATM providers could leave many consumers stranded.

One of the studies “suggests that geographically remote ATMs may be more heavily affected than urban ones,” the regulator’s managing director Hannah Nixon wrote to Morgan in a January 15 letter made public Wednesday, January 17.

Interchange are fees that banks and other card issuers pay to ATM operators to fund free-to-use machines. Around 80% of the UK’s ATMs do not charge fees.

Full Content: Payments Compliance

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