How to check for ATM fees when traveling?

Question

Using an ATM abroad might incur three different fees:

1. Currency exchange fee.

2. A fee levied by your bank for using your card abroad.

3. A fee levied by the ATM operator.

The first two are very easy to check (and avoid). I'm only struggling to find out whether the 3rd one will be charged and how much.

The only (mostly) reliable way to check it is to find an actual ATM, proceed with a withdrawal and wait for the machine to display (or not) a fee that will be charged. Usually, using ATMs next to bank branches is free.

However, this is not always the case. For example in Turkey and Rwanda I could withdraw for free at a bank, and with a fee of around 5 USD at another. And I couldn't find any info online in advance about that. In The Netherlands withdrawals from the big 4 banks would usually be free, and boutique ATMs like GWK and Euronet will charge over 5 Euros.

I wonder if there's a map to check for this, instead of doing a deep search for every country I travel to. I'm surprised VISA and MasterCard haven't come up with a solution like this already, or have they?

Answer 1

I'm afraid that, as it stands, you will have to do your 'deep search'.

The cost, levied by the ATM operator, can depend on your bank, your type of card, your country, the country you are withdrawing money in, and the bank/operator the ATM belongs to.

So, any exhaustive map that would allow you to look this up, would have to take into account who is doing the searching. Not impossible, of course, but quite a bit of work. And, yeah, I'm convinced there would be a market for a service that would provide this information.

fwiw, I'm finding that, over the last few years, it has become easier to pay in many stores with foreign debit cards, for which transaction fees (but not exchange fees) tend to be low or zero.

Answer 2

Card limits to the rescue (if you have an internet connection)

Our strategy is to set a limit on the card so that we can at most withdraw the amount we intend to withdraw. We typically use Revolut whilst abroad, so I will just put all the money I don't intend to withdraw into a 'pocket' or 'vault' or whatever they call it now (imagine a savings account without interest, the point is that you can't access it by paying with your card). Typically this means that I will have exactly 200 euros available at the start (as that's the monthly free withdrawal limit ).

Then I go to the ATM, and try to withdraw exactly 200 euros. If a fee is mentioned - and I deem the fee acceptable - I will adjust the amount I try to withdraw downwards. If a maximum withdrawal is mentioned, I adjust the amount available on the card before actually trying the withdrawal.

The point is that if there is an unadvertised fee (something I have seen only a handful of times in the last 3 years (25 countries or so)) this will cause the withdrawal to fail, and it will show me the fee by looking at the failed withdrawal notification.

Once with an ATM that felt shady (it was a tourist focused ATM, and it didn't ask whether we wanted to convert or not) we even just tried to withdraw whilst we intentionally had 0 euros on our card, to check whether it wouldn't do something weird (it did, so we ended up not using it).

Online research

In general the online communities of 'travel banks' (like the Revolut forums) are amazing places to find advice for ATMs that don't charge withdrawal fees (to be fair, these lists are often outdated and/or not completely accurate (e.g. in some countries visa cards might be charged whilst mastercards might not be on the same ATM), but they are amazing starting points). I will typically try to find a dedicated thread about a country I am travelling to, but here is for example one attempt to collect everything into a single spreadsheet: https://community.revolut.com/t/the-ultimate-free-atm-list-travelling-by-country/61491 (For example in that same thread someone mentions that in Rwanda I&M bank doesn't charge for a VISA card in 2019). Of course, this is more likely to be accurate if you use Revolut as well, but as a starting to point to figure out which ATMs to check out it's absolutely perfect no matter what.

Answer 3

ATMs belong to their operators, who need to make money from operating them. ATMs require quite an expensive set up: money transfer services, secured connection to the processing networks, physical security to avoid thefts and burglaries, handling breakdowns and issues. All these cost money, and the ATM fees are to pay for that.

Usually, the fees are published at or close to the ATM (stickers, or on screen as part of the withdrawal process). Different countries have different rules, so you should research your destination country for the specific rules there. You've mentioned some countries, there are many more with many more rules. In the US, for example, ATMs are usually not free even in bank branches and you should expect different fees depending on the bank and the location.

There are maps (e.g.: ATM locators by Visa, Mastercard), but I'm not sure how reliable they are when it comes to fees. I know for a fact that they may not be exhaustive.