The Antitrust Authority still takes six months to investigate the ATMs’ increase in costs on withdrawals. The competition authority has decided to extend the conclusion of the proceeding initiated in December 2020 from 29 April to 31 October 2022: the investigation was opened after the communication sent to the Antitrust by the same circuit on the cash withdrawal service at affiliated automatic bank branches (ATMs), which provided for the abolition of the interchange fee and the payment of a sum applied to the withdrawal – by the consumer – directly to the credit institution where the ATM is located. In September 2021, the Antitrust Authority had already extended the procedure following the commitments taken by Bancomat in terms of transparency and costs.
The knot, however, remains thorny: to date, when an ATM card holder makes a withdrawal at the counter of another bank, the issuing bank debits the sum withdrawn from the current account of its customer and credits the same sum to the bank that owns the ATM counter (sometimes, for the customer there is a surcharge for withdrawals from branches other than those of his own bank). The ATM bank also obtains payment of an interchange fee of 0.50 euros from the issuing bank.
Bancomat, on the other hand, would like to eliminate the interchange fee and apply, in its place, any commission directly to the cardholder; a sum that would be defined autonomously by each bank that owns the ATM and communicated to the customer before the latter authorizes the withdrawal operation.
A change that – according to Bancomat – would be justified by the increase in costs incurred by banks in managing ATMs due to the technological evolution of equipment and the risks associated with more sophisticated fraudulent activities. However, the proposal has aroused protests from consumers worried that each bank can independently apply a different tax to their liking. Maybe even taking advantage of the fact of being the only institution present in a municipality or in a neighborhood.
Indeed, when you find yourself withdrawing at an ATM you often have no choice, perhaps being in an area where digital payments are not yet widespread and where there is no branch of your bank. And it is precisely on this aspect that the Antitrust has decided to investigate, to assess whether the new circuit rules can configure an agreement capable of restricting or distorting competition in the common market: “It is necessary – he wrote in 2020 – to examine whether the market behavior of the subjects participating in the Bancomat Consortium, which occurs due to the provisions of the new remuneration rules for circular withdrawals, entails a restriction of competition, also taking into account the impact on the competitive capacity of the various operators, also in consideration of the different extension of the ATM network ».
Then, consumers were suspicious of the timing with which Bancomat announced the contractual modification: a few weeks after the agreement reached with the government for the cancellation of commissions on digital payments up to 5 euros.