Australia's four major banks will absorb only a modicum of financial pain from their respective decisions to bin ATM foreign transaction fees, with equity analysts saying the moves will have only a negligible impact on bottom lines.While most analysts agree that CBA and Westpac will take the biggest profit hits, the collective impact on the net profits of the major banks is expected to be no more than A$70 million.Macquarie Securities' research team estimates that NAB and ANZ will forego only $11 million and $14 million respectively on their bottom lines, which each equate to earnings sacrifices of around 0.2 per cent.The impact will be similar for CBA and Westpac, which each have much larger ATM networks than the Melbourne-based majors.Macquarie expects CBA to forego $21 million in the current financial year while Westpac is forecast to lose $18 million.The long-term impact on the banks is expected to taper in line with falling usage of ATMs by customers."We understand that the direct revenue impact for the majors is around ten to 20 million dollars after tax, with an additional potential impact from related fees," Macquarie analysts told clients in a research note."This suggests minimal impact of up to 0.2 per cent on forecast 2018 earnings per share."Furthermore, with ATM usage being in structural decline the impact on future year earnings is likely to be even smaller."Deutsche analyst Anthony Hoo told clients that the impact on profitability would be "negligible" and that banks seemed motivated to remove the unpopular fees to improve public sentiment towards the sector.However, Hoo warned that removal of the fees could hasten the withdrawal of ATM services across the country because monoliners and regional banks would soon find it uneconomic to retain their networks."While in the short term the consumer will benefit from the removal of these fees, in the longer term there are possible implications that could potentially detract from this," Hoo told clients in a report."There are possibly lesser incentives for the owners of ATMs to continue to invest in and maintain their networks, given that a large proprietary network is now no longer a point of competitive advantage."ATM usage peaked in 2009 but has since declined by around 30 per cent.During the same period the number of foreign ATM transaction has almost halved.Macquarie analysts noted that banks with smaller ATM footprints would be beneficiaries of the fee changes in the short term because their customers will automatically secure access to other networks at no extra cost.