Research Briefing
Published Tuesday, 01 December, 2020
Cash remains a key payment method for more vulnerable people, but its wider use is in decline, accelerated by the pandemic. How will Government and industry protect access to cash?
Protecting access to cash (696 KB, PDF)
Download full reportDownload ‘Protecting access to cash’ report (696 KB, PDF)
The way that consumers in the UK pay for goods and services has changed in recent years. Many consumers are increasingly turning their backs on cash and are moving to digital payments. This trend appears to have been accelerated by the coronavirus pandemic.
While there are benefits to digital payment methods, those who are unable to use this technology are at risk of being left behind. Lower income households and those who don’t have or can’t use the internet are much more likely to depend on cash and may therefore find themselves struggling in a cashless society. There is evidence that, during the pandemic, cash use declined less in constituencies with higher deprivation.
There are also a range of situations where digital payments are still less commonly used by consumers, for example: where online connectivity is limited; where retailers do not take card or where this functionality is down; or where someone relies on someone else making purchases on their behalf.
Lower consumer demand is putting the system for accessing cash under increasing strain, as the economic incentives for providing cash infrastructure slowly disappear. This has led to fears the cash system could collapse in coming years as demand for cash falls further.
There was a 13 per cent decrease in the number of free-to-use (FTU) ATMs between 2018 and 2019, coupled with a 38 per cent increase in the number of pay-to-use (PTU) machines. Data suggests that PTU ATMs have emerged disproportionately in more deprived areas since 2018. Work is currently taking place to map all cash access points in the UK in effort to understand whether communities still have free access to cash within a reasonable distance.
While ATMs accounted for 90 per cent of all cash withdrawn in 2019, consumers can also access cash via other channels, including over the counter at bank, building society and Post Office branches or through cashback at merchants that offer this service. Each of these have their own pros and cons as a way of accessing cash, however.
The other side of access to cash is the extent to which customers can pay by cash. There is limited evidence overall on the number of businesses that will not take cash. However, survey data suggest that one-in-ten consumers have been refused when trying to pay by cash since the start of the coronavirus pandemic.
The 2019 Access to Cash Review highlighted the need for different government bodies and regulatory authorities to work together to address access to cash. This prompted the Treasury to set-up and chair the Joint Authorities Cash Strategy (JACS) group, bringing together the Treasury, the Payment Systems Regulator (PSR), the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and Bank of England to lead the UK’s strategy on this issue.
In the 2020 Spring Budget, the Chancellor said the Government would legislate to protect access to cash in the UK. Following this, in October 2020, the Treasury published a call for evidence to inform its future strategy. This outlined the Treasury’s views that ATM provision may need to move towards a more ‘utility-based’ model in future, that cashback without purchase could be made more widely available through changes to legislation, and that the FCA is likely to be best-placed to regulate access to cash in future.
Simultaneously, there are ongoing industry-led schemes to protect cash access and to pilot new ways of doing so. The Government is also taking steps to reduce digital exclusion and to support new innovations in financial technology.
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