Free cash withdrawals from all ATMs from April 1

Come April 1 and you need not have to sweat it out looking for an ATM of your own bank as you can use ATMs of your choice without shelling out any extra money. Thanks to an RBI directive, much to the relief of common man, banks have been prevented from charging any fee for cash withdrawals using ATM and debit cards issued by other banks from April 1 onwards. However, banks can still charge extra for services like cash withdrawal with the use of credit cards and at ATMs located outside India. Last year on March 10, the RBI had come out with guidelines limiting the fee charged by banks for using their ATMs by clients of other lenders to Rs 20. It had also allowed the use of ATM for purposes like balance enquiry free of any charge. This was to ensure greater transparency and to facilitate usage of any ATM installed within the country by customers without shelling out more, the central bank had said. At present, banks charge Rs 20 per transaction when a customer uses the cash machine of any bank other than the one in which he/she has an account with. At the end of December 2007, there were 32,342 ATMs in the country and various banks have entered into bilateral and multi-lateral arrangements with other banks to have inter-bank ATM networks.