ATM fees

Naked Capitalism talks on the cash wars:

Now, I should note, that banks can point to economic factors that determine their decisions not to site and maintain ATMs in certain areas, thus creating cash deserts. To site an ATM requires a bank to incur $25-50,000 in capital costs – with the total amount depending on the sophistication of the machine. Most operators depreciate them over 5 years and run them for 7 meaning they they get two “free” years out of them in terms of hardware costs. This means they spend $5-10,000 each year to cover that aspect.
But the real hit to run an ATM is in maintenance. It’s necessary, at minimum, to replenish the ATM weekly, so that customers won’t find a machine has run out of cash when they visit it. Nor do banks want to lock up huge cash balances in these machines: that would mean they both incur a too-high cost-of-cash hit and that the ATM might pose a tempting target for thieves.
Usually, the maintenance and management cost is at least equivalent to the capital cost. In really remote places, that management and maintenance cost is obviously higher because it’s a longer trip to load it with cash, do the balancing, do housekeeping jobs like cleaning and sorting out note jams, retained cards etc.
If an ATM is only doing a few hundred dispenses per week, the cost per transaction ends up very steep. Far more than can be clawed back from the card issuer banks.
The bottom line is that it costs money to site and maintain an ATM, and the cost curve is only going to get worse over time. Meaning that not only is there an economic rationale for banks to ignore the reality of ATM-free cash desserts, but that the problem isn’t going away anytime soon, and will only worsen.