ATM Finder

One withdrawal, three separate fees

Canada is unusual in how many parties can charge for a single transaction. There are three kinds of fee: the user fee your own bank applies, the network access fee for using a machine outside your institution, and the convenience fee — the surcharge charged by whoever owns the machine.

They stack. Taking twenty dollars from a privately operated machine can attract a convenience fee from the operator, a network access fee, and a transaction fee from your account, none of which appears on the same line.

The surcharge screen is a legal right, not a formality

When an operator imposes a convenience fee, the amount has to be disclosed to you before the transaction completes, and you must be given the option of cancelling at no cost if you do not want to pay it. That screen is the point at which a nine-dollar withdrawal becomes avoidable.

It is worth reading rather than tapping through. Cancelling costs nothing and no money leaves your account, which makes the disclosure the single most useful protection Canadian cardholders have at the machine.

White label machines are where the high end of the range lives

The machines in convenience stores, bars, hotels and gas stations generally belong to private operators rather than banks. They are not part of any bank's network, so every card is a foreign card to them, and the operator sets the surcharge.

Since the fee is a flat amount, small withdrawals are punished hardest: a $3.00 surcharge on $20 is fifteen per cent. If a bank machine is a few minutes away, the walk is usually worth more per minute than anything else you will do that day.

If the machine keeps your card or debits without dispensing

Note the time, the address and the terminal number, and keep the receipt. File the claim with the institution that issued your card, not with the owner of the machine — only your issuer can take the dispute into the payment network and reverse the amount.

When money leaves the account and no cash appears, the reconciliation between the acquirer and your bank normally catches the discrepancy on its own within a few business days. Report it the same day regardless, so you have a date and a file number to refer to.