IS ATM NETWORK CONSOLIDATION LEADING TO UNDUE MARKET POWER?
Shared regional ATM networks are becoming fewer in number and larger in their geographic reach. The shared regional networks are competing not only with the ever-larger proprietary ATM networks that service a single bank but increasingly with the shared national networks that play the role of intermediary for foreign ATM transactions.(3) Those multiple sources of network competition suggest that the increasing concentration of shared regional ATM networks has not helped them to gain substantial economic power despite the reduction in their numbers. Indeed, as the earlier analysis of switch fees showed (see Chapter 3), shared regional networks for the most part have not acted to increase their own profits. Any market power that the shared regional ATM networks possess is wielded on behalf of their owners, the ATM deployers. For example, the lack of change in the level of interchange fees–in the face of a drop in the underlying costs of ATM ownership–could be construed as an attempt to
