People are worried about access to cash in rural areas, as the organisation which manages ATMs, called Link, is lowering incentives for fee-paying ATMs by cutting the fee paid by card issuers for cash withdrawals from 25p to 20p.
What it means: Consumer protection group Which? said 300 cash points are shutting down every month in the UK at the moment. Link disputes this, saying the number of free to use ATMs has increased… but they do admit that the number of fee-paying ATMs has been going down.
You might think that’s a good thing: but free-to-use ATMs only exist in places where there’s another ATM within a kilometer. That means fee-paying ones tend to be in areas with less access to cash (the same areas where more and more high street bank branches are closing too).
These areas rely more on local small businesses, which are less likely to take cards, and where people are more used to making cash payments.
