Bankinter signs bilateral agreements with five banking groups to offer its customers free debit withdrawals from cash machines
Bankinter customers will be able to make free cash withdrawals from the institution's own cash machines as well as from those belonging to the Banco Popular group, the Cajamar group, Laboral Kutxa, the Caja Rural group, and Deutsche Bank.
Together, the six companies have more than 8,000 cashpoints distributed throughout Spain, almost 20% of the total number.
Bankinter has signed bilateral agreements with five nationwide banking groups -the Banco Popular group, the Cajamar group, Laboral Kutxa, the Caja Rural group and Deutsche Bank- which will allow the bank's customers to make free cash withdrawals from any of their the cash machines.
It should be pointed out that, according to new regulations, it is the cash machine owner who has the power to set the fee for using its machines for the bank who issued the card. The card-user's bank then decides how much of this cost they pass on to their customer, although they can never charge more than the fee itself.
In this sense, Bankinter promises not to transfer any cash-withdrawal fees to its own customers for withdrawals made either from its ATMs or those of the other banks in the group, regardless of the amount taken out.
In practical terms, this means Bankinter's customers will be able to use an extensive network of 8,143 cashpoints (19.7% of all cash machines in Spain), evenly distributed across all the provinces, and located in rural environments, as well as towns and big cities. Bankinter has also designed various tools and mobile apps to let its customers know the locations of the closest cash machines from which they can make free cash withdrawals.
At the same time, all Bankinter's cash machines will let any user who wants to make a cash withdrawal know how much they will be charged by their bank, always according to the information provided by the other bank.
The overall goal of these agreements is to give Bankinter customers favourable access to cash withdrawals, as well as letting them know, clearly and transparently, the new regulations on cash machine fees.
It ought to be highlighted that with the new regulations, the previous fee policy will no longer be applied, according to the institutions' membership to the different payment networks. From now on, everything will depend on the bilateral agreements signed between companies, and each bank's strategy regarding whether or not their customer must pay the fees applied by the bank who owns the cash machine.