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by rtpg 2932 days ago
the EU could simply force banks to let you withdraw at market rates at any ATM
2 comments

> the EU could simply force banks to let you withdraw at market rates at any ATM

Even for liquid assets with centralized trading reporting, e.g. stocks listed on the NYSE, determining the "market" price is an academic pursuit. (The last traded price for any size? A similar size? The bid or ask? Immediate-execution price or sliced-up execution price? Et cetera.)

For foreign exchange, where trades aren't necessarily reported and occur, de-centralised, at a myriad of international venues and where infrequently-traded currency pairs have a habit of jerking around, such a regulation would be quite tedious to comply with.

Forex is way bigger than any stock market.

I traded forex for many years, and there would absolutely be no problem with this. There are plenty of web-sites where you can see real-time rates.

Of course, I know where to look (big retail forex trading sites are a good choice). General public would probably find something like Yahoo Finance which is not good for this.

There was a huge pushback from banks a few years ago when transaction fees at German ATMs were capped to (AFAIK) € 1,90.

The argument from banks is that there are a lot of online-only banks that rely on the ATMs of banks with physical branches in a parasitic manner.

And online banks like N26 complain in turn that Germany has the most expensive ATM fees in Europe. It sounds like a bullshit argument given that operational costs for an ATM are mostly fixed.
in the netherlands they are trying to solve this issue by making ATM's standardized and not bank-dependant.

Which seems like a far saner way to do it imo.