Top 10 Costa Rica

Take Care of Charges When Using ATMs in Costa Rica

It is best take a close look at bank charges, especially when using automated teller machines (ATM’s) of competing banks, as the charges could be as much as us$3 for each transaction. The charge and the amount also depends if a debit or credit card is used to make a withdrawl.

The banks defend that the high cost is due to commissions charged by competing banks and operators of the ATMs.

In Costa Rica there are several networks providing ATMs, the state banks Banco de Costa Rica (BCR) and Banco Nacional (BN), for instance have their own separate networks. The private banks generally fall into two groups, the ones using the “Red Total” operated by the BAC San José and ATH, which connects a number of major private banks like HSBC, Citibank and Scotiabank.

Each network has their own set of guidelines for charges of use by their customers and different for customers using competing plastic.

HSBC customers pay us$0.50 for each transaction at an ATH ATM and us$1.50 for transaction made on other ATMs. At Scotiabank, the charge is us$1.50 and us$3. But those charges depend on a number of factors, the ATM location and the competing bank, even though it may be part of the ATH network.

The majority of private banks do not charge if customers uses the issuing card’s bank.

At the BCR, the ATM charge is depending on the account balance and the number of transaction in a month. For customers with and average monthly deposit less than us$350 dollars, the bank charges us$0.20 per transaction, free if the balance is higher. The BN has a similar policy. Both state banks also charge their customers for using the ATH network.

The banks publish the charges in the government publication La Gaceta. However, few customers know the charges when using an ATM,

To that end, to keep the public informed, some banks post the charges applied to a transaction at or near the ATM. However, no bank has yet to introduce in their system a warning of pending charges when an ATM transaction is initiated, like banks do in other countries.

The banks defend the lack of notice by saying that it would be virtually impossible to do so since the banks provide a host of services, each with its own cost. Arnoldo Trejos of the Bancrédito, told the La Nación, that the bank would have to be constantly sending out notices to customers of charges for each service.

Are Costa Rican banks that far behind? or is it just that the current banking regulations permit the banks to avoid giving out the notices? The collective answer is that Costa Rican banks are following international standards.