After the Euronet “strike”, mBank has important news for customers
Customers who wanted to withdraw money from Euronet ATMs on Tuesday were surprised when they learned from the device screen that they could only withdraw PLN 200 at a time. This is not a failure, but a planned strike action. mBank decided to refund the customers the commission they had to pay for this reason.
On Tuesday, Poland’s largest ATM operator, Euronet, went on strike and allowed customers to withdraw only PLN 200 in one transaction. Customers who needed a larger amount had to repeat the entire operation several times, which resulted in additional costs.
Euronet went on strike. mBank responds
Because money also prompted Euronet to go on such an unusual strike. The company believes that the commissions paid by banks are too low and it is not profitable to maintain a network of ATMs (currently 7.5 thousand devices).
The sudden “strike action” surprised customers and banks. Euronet acted unexpectedly and presented customers with a fait accompli. mBank decided to meet the interests of customers who lost money as a result of making several withdrawals. “Yesterday, Euronet lowered the one-time withdrawal limit to PLN 200 for customers of all banks in Poland for one day. For many of you, this involved additional costs. Since neither we nor you had any influence on this situation, we decided to refund all fees charged yesterday for cash withdrawals in this network’s devices,” the bank said.
He added that the refund will be automatic and will be credited no later than the end of June.
ATMs are disappearing from Polish streets
Poles have become convinced of cashless payments: we pay by card in stores, we transfer money to each other using Blitz or to our accounts. Even some children have not been receiving pocket money in cash for a long time, but by transfer to a special account for young people. For this reason, the number of ATMs decreases every year: a decade ago, they were on every major street, and at the end of 2022, there were 21,310 ATMs on the Polish market. This is 2,441 machines less than five years earlier.
The National Bank of Poland published data on the ATM market in Poland in 2022. The report shows that despite the decline in the number of devices, we still willingly use them. In 2022, Poles used them to make 494 million payments with a total value of PLN 379 billion. For comparison, a year earlier there were 488 million such transactions and their value was PLN 342 million. However, it should be taken into account that the study was conducted during the pandemic, when interest in cash increased significantly.
