Withdrawing money at the supermarket checkout has become part of everyday life for many consumers. Retailers pay banks a fee for this service – wrongly, says the HDE association.
For many supermarket customers, the checkout in the store already replaces going to the cash machine. However, retailers in Germany no longer want to pay for customers to be able to withdraw cash while shopping. According to the German Trade Association (HDE), banks should waive the fees charged for payouts.
“The banks are reducing ATMs and branches in many places. Retailers are taking over some of the tasks that customers depend on. That should also be worth something,” said HDE expert for payment transactions, Ulrich Binnebößel, to the dpa news agency.
20 percent more money at the checkout
The volume of payouts at store checkouts has increased to 12.31 billion euros, according to the retail research institute EHI. Withdrawing cash when shopping is now offered by many retailers.
As usage increases, the fees that trading companies have to pay to banks also increase. According to the EHI, they are between 0.1 and 0.2 percent of the amount paid out per Girocard transaction. Large chain stores such as the supermarket chain Rewe negotiate their conditions individually with the banks.
The companies that offer cash distribution at the checkout include the food retailers Rewe and Edeka, drugstores such as dm and Rossmann and also hardware stores. According to a study, they give out more than 13 percent of the cash they collect back to their customers.
Costs passed on to customers
Last year, retailers paid 17.23 million euros in fees to the banks. According to Binnebößel’s information, the costs are added to the final prices and thus passed on to the customers.
A waiver of fees does not seem to be on the agenda for the banks. The German Savings Banks and Giro Association (DGSV) rejected the demand: “The dealers offer this service voluntarily. Many of them even advertise it and present the opportunity to receive cash at the checkout as a special service for their customers,” such a speaker.
“It is neither possible nor desirable for retailers to take over the function of over 51,000 ATMs throughout Germany,” the DGSV spokesman continued. The DSGV speaks for the German banking industry, the umbrella organization of the major banking associations.
Walks to the ATM become longer
For many bank customers, however, the route to cash has become longer in recent years. A survey published in February by the Federal Association of Consumer Organizations shows: 26 percent of respondents say that withdrawing cash has become more complicated in the past three years because ATMs have been dismantled and bank branches have been closed.
The trend towards branch closures and fewer ATMs has been observed across the industry for years. For example, the number of Volks- and Raiffeisenbank branches in Germany shrank rapidly – from 13,211 in 2012 to 7,512 ten years later. In 2022 itself, the number of ATMs reported for Germany fell by almost five percent.