Jun 3, 2008
Open an account with Commerce Bank, and you'll no longer pay ATM fees while traveling away from your home city
Been to an ATM machine recently? If it's not a member of your own bank or ATM system or network, you'll pay an increasingly hefty sum to use it, even for taking out as little as $20. The former $1 and $1.50 fees have virtually disappeared. Nowadays, it's common for an out-of-network ATM machine to charge a minimum of $2, and often $3 and even up to $4 per transaction. And if you're out-of-town (and especially overseas), and can't easily find an ATM machine belonging to your own bank or network, you'll pay those hefty fees every time you use an ATM machine, incurring a growing expense.
To the rescue comes: Commerce Bank. Commerce Bank is a fast-growing bank that's out to be recognized as America's most consumer-friendly bank. It charges no fee for using your ATM card, issued by them, at an out-of-network machine. And if, by chance, you are nevertheless charged such a sum, it will refund the amount when you return home and present your receipt to them.
On our radio program yesterday (noon to 2pm, www.wor710.com), my daughter Pauline and I discussed the reports we had heard that Commerce Bank charges no ATM fee. Within the hour, we received an e-mail from friend and colleague, travel writer Reid Bramblett (www.reidsguides.com), sent from Verona, Italy (where he is researching a travel article), and commenting on our discussion as follows:
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To the rescue comes: Commerce Bank. Commerce Bank is a fast-growing bank that's out to be recognized as America's most consumer-friendly bank. It charges no fee for using your ATM card, issued by them, at an out-of-network machine. And if, by chance, you are nevertheless charged such a sum, it will refund the amount when you return home and present your receipt to them.
On our radio program yesterday (noon to 2pm, www.wor710.com), my daughter Pauline and I discussed the reports we had heard that Commerce Bank charges no ATM fee. Within the hour, we received an e-mail from friend and colleague, travel writer Reid Bramblett (www.reidsguides.com), sent from Verona, Italy (where he is researching a travel article), and commenting on our discussion as follows:
I heard you guys mention something about Commerce Bank and the rumor regarding its ATM fees.For our readers who may not be familiar with Commerce Bank, it does business (and has branches) in the following states: New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, eastern Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, northern Virginia, District of Columbia, Florida, Missouri, Kansas, Illinois, and Oklahoma. There may also be a way (I haven't done it) to open an online bank account with Commerce and thus obtain a Commerce ATM card. That's obviously a valuable card to have.
I am happy to confirm that it is absolutely true. This is a major reason I have been a loyal Commerce customer for nearly a decade now. They do not charge you to use out-of-network ATMs, regardless of whether than ATM is just a Citibank machine in Manhattan or a Banco Popolare di Milano machine in Milan, or an HBSC machine in Bangkok. Other banks charge between $1 and $4 to use out-of-network (and out-of-country) ATMs. Commerce doesn't nickel-and-dime you on anything like that. (And, since foreign banks have yet to hit upon the money-making scheme of tacking on a few extra bucks for using an out-of-network card, you don't get charged a fee from their end, either.)
Between my Commerce ATM card not charging me fees (or greedy extra percentage points for the foreign exchange process) and my Capital One Visa card not adding on any fees beyond Visa's 1% for foreign transactions (and they use the actual best published exchange rate; I've checked using my own statements and the rates from Oanda's historical currency convertor), I have the most financially streamlined way of spending money on the road.
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Fifty years ago, 
Arthur Frommer is generally acknowledged to be the nation's foremost travel authority. He is the founder of the
