Citibank ATM Charge

Hello everyone,

I'm visiting Japan in May10 and i'm researching on the charges involved for withdrawing Yen with a Citibank card from a Citibank ATM in Japan.

Could someone with experience kindly advise if there are nil charges, or is there a 3% currency transaction fee involved?

Many thanks

You should check with your own branch of Citibank- it is actually the home bank that charges the fees on overseas ATM withdrawals.

Well, after much research online i've finally solved my own qns.

In the past, and i can confirm this from my own travels is that Citibank withdrawal from their own atms anywhere in the world used to be completely fee free. It seems somewhere in 2008, this policy was changed and a 3% Foreign Transaction Fee is now levied as long as the withdrawal currency differs from your original deposit currency.

I hope this is helpful to anyone visiting Japan. Cheers!

I am coming in a little late, but yes, there is a 3% fee. I think there is also a base fee of about $2, at least there was with me - I just got back from Japan last week.

So it was something like $2 + 3% of the total withdrawn, which obviously makes it rather expensive. I remember paying upwards of $15 for a withdrawal.

Hi,

I opened my Citibank account in NY, specifically to have access in Japan when I'm there. The only fee I recall was a flat $5.00 ATM fee. I was not charged a 3% transaction fee.

With my Citi account, there is no ATM fee charged by Citibank anywhere in the world, but yes to the 3% transaction fee.

Hi,
Keep in mind that the 3% is 'on top of' the exchange rate the bank applies. And some banks do use a lousy exchange rate. So besides looking at the ATM additional cost you also might consider the exchange rate for your bank (which might be more than a couple percent compared to other banks!).

Butch

I'm from Singapore and am traveling to Japan in Aug '10.

I have called up Citibank Singapore and I have confirmed that there is no 3% transaction charge or even an ATM fee, in fact the only thing i have to bear is the Citibank exchange rate. So perhaps it'd be good to check in with your local Citibank for details.

I've just been to a branch in Singapore and the officer confirmed there is no charge using a Singapore citibank ATM card in japan. She acknowledge that they offer poor exchange rates. But I think it's not going to be much worse than the 1 percent charged for travellers cheques.

So, these policies often change, and you always need to check with your local bank also, though in my experience reps often don't actually know. Here is what I can tell you

(experience is combined from myself - US account, ATMs in Korea/ friend - Japanese Account, ATMs in Korea/ friend - US Account, Japanese ATMs)

The catch 22 is that there are 2 kinds of Citibank atms in several countries. Korea and Japan seem to work the same at least (cannot speak beyond that).

Citibank Worldwide ATMs: No transaction fee, no atm fee, ~1-2% loss from exchange rate.

Citibank local ATMs: ATM fee varies (from none-$3 equivalent), transaction fee of 3%, and the worst, ~8% loss for exchange rate (last part is only confirmed on Korea ATM, but I suspect it will be comparable for other countries).

Worldwide ATMs seem to usually only be the ones inside banks (a citibank rep also acknowledged that sometimes this is the case). On one occasion, I did withdraw from an atm in a bank, that still functioned as a local one. I have found no way to distinguish them otherwise though. If you need to withdraw a lot, I suggest making a small withdrawal first, checking your account to confirm it.

Hope this helps someone :-)

IF you have a multi currency a/c (e.g. JPY, USD,AUD, SGD) with Citibank, all you need to do is make that account default for withdrawal during your overseas travel. The assumption is you have various currencies in those multi currency a/c.

Use it in Citi ATM in Japan and its free etc. Change to your USD account for free withdrawal in Citi ATM in US.... same goes for AUD and the other eligible currency accounts. I've being doing that all this while. However if you forget to change the card linkage to the account you're withdrawing from - e.g. withdraw JPY while in Japan from your USD a/c, then an FX occurs.