Indigents receiving cash transfers from the government and old-age and disability pensioners who are cardholders of the state-owned Land Bank of the Philippines will bear the brunt of the looming increase in interbank automated teller machine withdrawal fees.
Thus said Makati City Rep. Luis Campos Jr., adding “While they can always withdraw their money free of charge from any Land Bank ATM, many of them actually end up using the nearest machine of another bank, mostly to save on transportation costs.
“Thus they will be forced to cough up the P18 fee per withdrawal transaction,” Campos, a member of the House committee on banks and financial intermediaries, said.
Campos said Land Bank’s 2,188 ATM terminals comprise only 10 percent of the national network of cash dispensers.
Land Bank’s cardholders include the 4.4 million families under the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program and the bulk of the 3.1 million combined pensioners of the Social Security System and the Government Service Insurance System.
The 1.8 million national and local government employees are also Land Bank cardholders.
Campos earlier urged the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas to defer the increase in withdrawal fees, saying “it is a bad time for banks to be punishing nickel-and-diming pandemic-weary Filipinos amid the massive job losses and soaring food prices.”
Many of the country’s private banks that now charge only P10 to P11 per interbank ATM withdrawal transaction have already announced on their websites that they will be raising the fee to P18 effective April 7.