After five years, PNC Financial Services Group Inc. has put an end to its free ATMs program.
The program, launched in 2006, allowed PNC customers to avoid fees for using non-PNC ATM. The program gave its consumers 100% reimbursements if the non-PNC ATM network charged a fee. At the time, the program gave PNC customers free access to 1 million ATMs worldwide, including 395,000 across the United States.
No more. PNC has quietly ended the program. No word on why, but at the time of the program’s launch, PNC said consumers paid an average of $126 a year in ATM usage fees, and that total fees paid reached a record high of $4.2 billion in 2005. That number is higher today.
PNC currently maintains 6,700 ATMs. Its consumer and small business customer base now numbers 5 million.
PNC MESSAGE UPON ATTEMPTING TO ACCESS INFORMATION ON THE FREE ATM PROGRAM:
Many financial institutions are dealing with revenue losses from the Durbin Amendment. Many of them are doing away with rewards programs and other features to recoup the money lost from interchange fees. In my opinion, however, banks can (and should) keep the programs that add value to their offerings for particular customer segments–they should reserve these programs for their most profitable customers. The free ATM feature could be a premium service that is only offered to customers who open a premium demand deposit account. Does this account require a yearly fee of somewhere around $126 dollars? That is up to the bank, but doing away with valuable programs all together could result in customer attrition that ends up costing a lot more than the losses due to regulations.