CBN lied: Banks still charge N100 for ATM Withdrawals from Other banks.

On the 13th of November, the Central Bank of Nigeria had a meeting with the Bankers Committee on the issue of Automated Teller Machines (ATM) interoperability, where they decided that banks will no longer have to charge the usual N100 from customers of other banks. The news went wide, on the newspapers, the television and on cyberspace. Commendations poured in from different angles, in fact, some individuals felt a part of their democratic dividend has finally started coming in.

The Group Managing Director of First Bank Plc, Mr Bisi Onasanya after the meeting announced to the press saying, “We have decided that we will work out the modality and ensure that with immediate effect we would pass on this cost to the respective banks which bear the cost of providing services. No matter where you are withdrawing your money from, you will not be subjected to any charge for using the ATM.”

If really the above statement is true and CBN’s motive is genuine, how come banks still charge N100. Some people complained to me about the CBN’s deception, in fact, some saw it as an untrue bribery by the CBN for Nigerians to accept the introduction of 5000 Naira notes and Coins. So yesterday, i decided to practically verify for myself the trueness of their claim, i went to one of Access Bank branches to use an ATM card from another bank, but was immediately warned by the regular auto-generated message that says i will be charged N100 otherwise i should press “No” and seek a more charitable bank (my bank). I felt probably they have not yet cleared their system cache and replace the message with something more appropriate, i proceeded to withdraw but was stunned by surprise when i received an alert of N100 debit from my account.

Does it mean that the banks in line with the CBN’s instruction, has not yet effected the change or as usual the CBN Governor brought up another policy that will never survive?