> On a recent trip to the US (San Francisco), I was surprised by how much ATMs charge. The ATM in my hotel was the lowest I found, charging only $4

If you use your bank's ATM, they won't charge you a fee ( aka waive the fee ). If you use another bank's ATM or a non-bank ATM, then it's highway robbery. So the only time I ever use an ATM is if it had my bank's logo on it.

> Compare this to Europe where in most countries ATMs do not have a fee

Wow. Does this apply even if you use another bank's ATM?

In my country I can use the ATM of any bank (even competitors) and won't be charged by my bank or the ATM owning bank. It's not a feature on my account, it's just the standard way things work here. It's not reimbursement either (as was mentioned in another thread about the US), they just don't have fees for this.

> Wow. Does this apply even if you use another bank's ATM?

It varies but typically ATMs prefer charging the card issuer rather than the customer. So if you're using a bank that doesn't charge when you withdraw money out of its network, then it's essentially free. That's very common with online banks.

The same is true in the US. Ally Bank automatically reimburses fees up to $10/month, and Charles Schwab reimburses without any limit. Each back obviously has its own network and policies for out of network withdrawals, but I can't remember the last time I actually paid an ATM fee (I use Ally Bank).

One of the reasons why the cashless society caught on is because there are no transaction fees when people use a bank card. I can go months without using cash.

No transaction fees to the customer.

There are absolutely transaction fees (also called processing fees) involved, but they're usually paid by the merchant. That's why many shopowners usually post required minimum purchase amounts for credit cards (i.e. you must buy $10 or more in order to pay with credit card).

Cash also has handling costs for the merchant, like hiring a money transporter or needing an employee or two to take the money to the bank (presumably during bookable hours)

But those costs are much less than the network fees since they're done in bulk instead of per transaction. Credit card processing fees are ~3%, so for every $1k in sales, you pay ~$30, whereas going to the bank is a fixed cost and merely takes time and can be scheduled when it's cheapest to do. So dealing with cash scales well since it has a fixed cost, whereas credit/debit gets more expensive (compared to cash) as revenue increases.