UK Parliament is concerned about potential effects of the pandemic on the UK’s cash infrastructure

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Members of Parliament (MPs) in the UK’s House of Commons are voicing concerns about the possibility that plummeting ATM usage due to the coronavirus pandemic is putting the country’s cash infrastructure in danger of collapse, ATM Marketplace reports.

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A letter signed by 37 MPs has been sent to UK Chancellor Rishi Sunak, asking him to protect the country’s cash infrastructure, including its ATM network. Recommended measures include reviving free-to-use ATMs for local communities and maintaining incentive for operators to keep ATMs online by reversing cuts to the interchange fees banks pay to those operators.

In the letter, MPs also criticized the UK’s main debit and ATM card issuer, the Link network, saying that Link’s guarantee that communities facing cash shortages will have their ATMs replaced by one from a Link member bank falls short in filling the gap, per ATM Marketplace.

In the course of just a few months, the coronavirus has had staggering effects on the usage of ATMs and cash more widely. During the lockdown period in the UK, ATM withdrawals have plunged 60%, per data from YouGov published in late April cited by Crowdfund Insider.

And the usage of cash on the whole has receded as well: Approximately three-quarters of UK consumers confirmed that they aren’t using physical currency as much as they were before the crisis. A solid majority (58%) say they are conducting significantly fewer cash transactions, and 54% say that they’ve been avoiding cash and using digital payments platforms.

But the lasting effects on consumers’ usage of physical money could pose even more of a threat to the UK cash infrastructure in the long run. Over three-quarters (76%) of respondents to the YouGov survey said the coronavirus pandemic is likely to impact their future use of cash, with 50% saying they plan to use payment cards with greater regularity and 31% saying they intend to use ATMs less frequently.

And these shifts away from cash usage could be exacerbated by the fact that it’s costing UK consumers more and more to access money via ATMs. If a greater portion of UK consumers exhibit a lasting reduced dependence on cash, there will be less incentive for banks to maintain their ATM networks at their current size, though those that do could enjoy fierce customer loyalty from clients who remain dependent on physical currency as cash access options recede.

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