There are around 80 public sector, private, cooperative and foreign participating banks in the ATM network in the country.

After the ATM transactions fees on using other banks' ATMs was scrapped in April, the IBA studied the entire gamut of ATM transactions.

'We found that a majority of the ATM transactions were in the range of average withdrawals of Rs.3,500-4,000, and 90 percent of all transactions were below Rs.10,000. Hence, the intended purpose to serve the common man was achieved,' Unnikrishnan said.

However, there was a small minority of users who withdrew very large sums on account of high card limits given by some banks to privileged customers.

At the other extreme, there were some customers who withdrew miniscule amounts, or made other kinds of inquiries. This created several logistics problems causing avoidable expenditure for banks at the cost of the common user, he said.

Taking into account these and related aspects, the IBA submitted a proposal to RBI last month.

'We shall give sufficient notice to the customers before implementing it, and individual banks can also inform their customers about the proposal and whether or not they would charge their customers. It will give time to effect suitable modifications in the ATM programmes to implement it,' Unnikrishnan said.