The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) on Tuesday said it had asked Financial Information Service Co Ltd (FISC, 財金資訊) to consider reducing the processing fees for small online and automated teller machine (ATM) transactions.
Local banks charge NT$15 each time money is transferred between banks at ATMs or online, and NT$5 for each cash withdrawal at an ATM.
The commission has yet to finalize what constitutes a “small” transaction, but officials insinuated that might range from NT$1,000 to NT$3,000.
The commission’s move came after legislators in May said that Taiwan’s online banking transfer fees were too high and requested that authorities reduce the fees to help promote the digital economy.
Processing fees in Taiwan are relatively lower than those charged in Australia, Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, China and South Korea, the commission said.
In Singapore, the ATM cross-bank transfer fee is about NT$400, but online banking transfers are free, while the ATM cross-bank transfer fee in Hong Kong is about NT$40, the commission said.
About 37.62 million people transferred money online last year, which is relatively lower than the 879 million people who used ATMs during the period, commission data showed.
As the ATM processing fee in the UK is expensive and considering that ATMs might eventually disappear, the British government is moving toward mobile payment systems, FSC chairman Wellington Koo (顧立雄) said on Tuesday at a Taiwan-UK fintech memorandum of understanding signing ceremony in Taipei.
However, unlike the UK, Taiwanese lawmakers asked the commission to encourage banks to set up more ATMs, he said.
As mobile payments are becoming increasingly popular, Koo said that ATMs should not only be used for money withdrawals or cross-bank transfers, but should also be able to provide mobile payment services.
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