It is getting increasingly difficult to find an ATM and harder still to find one that doesn’t charge fees, prompting warnings that the push toward a cashless society is neither equitable nor wise.
Bank-owned ATM numbers are down almost 60% since 2017, according to regulatory data, with many spots now taken by third party-owned machines that typically charge about $3 a withdrawal.
The trend has left an increasing number of people unable to easily access free withdrawals, which weighs disproportionately on less affluent people who take out smaller amounts more frequently and those in remote areas.
Prof Mark Humphery-Jenner said he was recently inconvenienced in an inner-city suburb where the nearest free ATM was a 10-minute walk away.
“In rural locations, it’s exponentially worse,” said Humphery-Jenner, an associate professor at UNSW.
“How many bank branches are even around in rural locations any more?”
Branch and ATM closures have arguably shifted cash distribution responsibility from the financial sector to supermarkets and post offices, limiting consumers to their opening hours and imposing tighter withdrawal limits.
Humphery-Jenner said banks have a responsibility to provide convenient cash access.
“If banks are going to take individuals’ cash, then it is incumbent upon them to allow those individuals to withdraw that cash,” he said.
“That should be part of their banking licence; not a social licence, but an actual licence to operate.”
Cash to cards
ATM numbers peaked in 2016, shortly before Commonwealth Bank led the banking sector to cut their unpopular $2 fee for all withdrawals, giving customers of any Australian bank free access to most automated teller machines.
But the banks then started cutting ATM numbers almost immediately.
While bank-owned ATM numbers have dropped about 60% since fees were eliminated, overall numbers are down about 28%, with third party-operated machines often taking their place.
Only a handful of banks, including Macquarie and ING, offer limited or full ATM fee refunds to their customers.
Some banks, such as Westpac and ANZ, have negotiated fee waivers with Armaguard’s atmx network, while users from banks without an agreement pay a fee.
Around the same time that ATMs started disappearing, from 2017, there was a spike in debit card usage, which was advertised as a way for customers to more conveniently access their own money.
A complicated system of opaque card charges has gone on to create a multibillion-dollar revenue opportunity for banks, card and payment providers.
The issue has become a political flashpoint amid rising cost-of-living pressures, prompting the Reserve Bank to bring forward its review of the payments system.
A CBA spokesperson said the bank maintains the largest bank-owned ATM network in Australia. The spokesperson said CBA participates in a program to ensure customers who live in certain remote Indigenous communities can access fee-free withdrawals.
A Westpac spokesperson said that through the tie-up with atmx its customers can access the “largest combined fleet of fee-free ATMs in the country”.
While cash usage is falling, many people still rely on notes and coins. These include many older Australians, those with limited or no internet access, people on low incomes and those with a disability.
Jason Bryce from Cash Welcome, a group that advocates cash usage, said banks can’t get rid of their ATMs without a plan to allow their own customers easy and cheap access to their money.
“They have more than a social responsibility to deliver cash,” said Bryce.
“They have an economic responsibility to maintain this national economic infrastructure. Banks must ensure that we can have easy, local, cheap, or preferably fee-free access to our cash.”
Bryce said cash was particularly important during times of emergency.
“You can’t turn it on if there’s a natural disaster or a war. Cash has to be operating, and it’s got to be freely circulating.”
