Banks generate more than $10 billion a year in revenue when people use their ATM cards in other bank’s ATM machines. Now, banks in the U.S. want to increase their fees to recover losses in today's struggling economy.

Banks say they are having a hard time because of the poor economy prevailing in the United States, so to offset their losses they want to increase ATM fees to $3 per transaction when customers use a different bank's ATM machine (banks don't usually charge you to use their own ATMs)

The ATM fee is one of the cash cows of banks, and with this increase, they hope to generate more profit.

As ABC News reports, "Today, the average ATM fee is $1.78, while five years ago it cost a little more than a $1 to retrieve money from a bank with which you didn't have an account."

In some cases, customers get charged twice -- one from their own bank for not using their ATM machine, and another time from the other bank where they are not a member.

JP Morgan Chase released a statement saying, banks "created a network of 9,100 ATMs for the convenience and free use by our customers. It is appropriate to charge non- customers a fee."

Besides Chase, Bank of America and Wachovia, some banks are already charging a $3 fee for non-customers.

One man complained to ABC News about this ATM fees increase, saying "I don't think it's fair — that in order to hopefully fix things — that it's one and a half times what you used to spend at the ATM."

According to ABC news, the banks are trying to recover the losses they suffered in mortgage loans and a number of bad loans. Banks say they are increasing fees to offset the big cost of convenience. Compared to the last decade, ATM use has increased from 140,000 to 400,000 transactions happening nationwide every day.

Analysts speculate banks will also increase fees such as insufficient fund penalties, late credit card fees, wire transfer fees and more.

In order to avoid high ATM fees, withdraw cash when you use debit cards at grocery stores or when you shop at malls. Wherever they accept ATM cards, they will almost always provide an option to withdraw cash from your account.

It is also easy to avoid ATM fees for those who want to: You can monitor your ATM activity with services like Mint.com or Wesabe.com -- free finance online services. I personally use an online bank that has no ATMs anywhere in the state. By taking cash out at grocery stores, for example, I have paid ATM fees only a few times in the last five years.

Do you pay a lot of ATM fees?