Free cash machines closing at a record rate

This represents a significant fall in the number of free-to-use ATMs. LINK had promised to protect rural ATMs following a cut in the funding for free to use ATMs but 76 of these protected cash machines closed between January and July, 21 of them without even a Post Office nearby to get cash over the counter.

Both the Government regulator the Payment Systems Regulator (PSR) and LINK have promised to introduce measures to protect free to use ATMs in rural areas.

Jenni Allen, managing director of Which? Money, said: “The rate at which free-to-use cashpoints are closing is alarming.”

She said the regulator “must now urgently intervene to stop further closures and ensure no more consumers are suddenly stripped of their access to cash”.

Ged Killen MP for Rutherglen and Hamilton West and an outspoken critic of the cuts to ATM funding and who has a bill in Parliament to ban ATM charges and protect access to cash responded to the most recent findings of ATM closures saying: “Free-to-use ATMs are closing at a record rate, this is despite many warnings and calls for further protections delivered by MPs, consumer groups and ATM operators to the PSR and LINK.”

“We may be heading towards a cashless society, but we are not there yet. Any reduction in access to free cash will have the greatest impact on small businesses, the least well off in society and as we are seeing, rural communities.”

“The banks who make up two thirds of LINKS membership are determined to force the pace of change rather than this being set by the public. The PSR failed to take heed of warnings from ATM operators before the first interchange cut, it must now show that it is more than just a bystander and intervene to protect free access to cash.”