The Australian banking landscape is undergoing a significant transformation, and it's not all good news for consumers, especially those in regional areas.

A worrying trend has emerged among the country's major banks, including Commonwealth Bank, National Australia Bank (NAB), and Australia and New Zealand Banking Group (ANZ), which could have far-reaching implications for Australians.

The number of bank-owned ATMs has been cut by more than half since 2017, and bank branches have also seen a significant decline.

This trend is causing concern among politicians and consumers alike, who fear it could lead to Australia becoming a cashless society.

The number of bank-owned ATMs have significantly decreased since 2017. Image source: fanjianhua on Freepik.

According to data compiled by the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority, the number of bank-owned ATMs has plummeted from 13,814 in 2017 to just 5,693.

Over the same period, the number of bank branches has decreased from 5,694 to 3,588.

This decline is happening despite major banks like Commonwealth Bank reporting substantial profits.

Earlier this February, the bank announced a half-yearly profit of $5 billion, only slightly down from its previous six-month record result.

Liberal Senator Jonathon Duniam has voiced his concern over this trend, arguing that banks are failing regional Australians by not keeping their ATMs functional.

'Frankly it’s probably cost-cutting measures on the part of banks that I find very disappointing,' he said.

'I think these organisations that make significant profits should be required to maintain these facilities in regional communities.'

'I’ve got nothing against profits but delivering on these services to communities is critically important.'

'They’ve closed the branches. ATMs are a much cheaper alternative. Please keep them particularly in regional communities and big cities too.'

Senator Duniam also highlighted the dangers of an over-reliance on electronic transactions.

He recalled the recent mass outage of the Optus network in November, which rendered many EFTPOS machines useless.

'What do we do if we don’t have ATMs?' he asked.

'If people aren’t using cash, if shops won’t accept cash we are going to be a bit stuck.'

The senator also noted that many elderly people are uncomfortable with electronic transactions, further underscoring the need for maintaining cash access.

Banks have defended their decision to close branches and ATMs by pointing out that fewer customers are using these services.

By the end of 2022, cash only accounted for 13 per cent of Australian consumer payments, compared to 70 per cent in 2007.

Last December, Reserve Bank Governor Michele Bullock suggested that businesses should charge fees to Australians who use cash. While she admitted such a move was unlikely due to potential backlash, she argued that from an economist's point of view, it was justifiable.

'As economists you want people to face the prices of using particular services that reflect the cost of those services,' Ms Bullock said.

LNP Senator Gerard Rennick, who initiated and sits on a Senate committee conducting an inquiry into bank closures, responded by saying Ms Bullock was 'way out of touch' for suggesting the idea.

He was adamant that Australians should never have to pay extra to use cash.

He also accused Ms Bullock of losing sight of her area of responsibility.

'She should be representing the interests of the Australian people,' Senator Rennick said.

Key Takeaways

• ATMs in Australia have decreased substantially since 2017, with numbers cut by more than half.
• Senator Jonathon Duniam advocated for banks to maintain ATM services, particularly in regional areas, and criticised bank cost-cutting measures despite their significant profits.
• Concerns have been raised about the potential challenges and risks of a cashless society, especially for those uncomfortable with electronic transactions, such as many elderly people.
• There are differing opinions on whether businesses should charge for cash transactions, with Reserve Bank Governor Michele Bullock suggesting it could be justified, while Senator Gerard Rennick strongly opposes extra fees for using cash.

What are your thoughts on this trend? Have you been affected by the closure of ATMs or bank branches in your area? Share your thoughts and experiences in the comments below.

 

[mylittletibbies]

Correct, you are

IYO

 

[Greg350]

Oh,so now I know why you stick up for the banks. At least 45 years ago you were lucky enough to have a job in a bank, along with thousands of others.
Where are those jobs now.
There are plenty of credit unions where you can get housing loans.
Also you can get private loans from solicitors. I have done this over the years, thru my own solicitor, on better terms than the bank.
I belong to a member bank, where I pay no fees, get excellent service, something the major banks have completely forgotten about
Sorry to keep on whinging, NOT!!!

So because I worked in a bank 45 years ago I stick up for banks? hahaha, what a ridiculous notion.

Where are those jobs? Unemployment at 4.1%, hundred's of thousands of jobs that cannot be filled, you do know that businesses change, jobs move from one sector to another sector, often new sectors. If the banks don't need the staff why employ them. Should them spend money for people to sit around doing nothing? Maybe that's the job you'd like, do nothing.
Credit unions - banks with a different name, you don't think they make profits, they lookout for themselves as number one? Delusional. Solicitors loans, hahahahahahaha, come on get in the real world, the only loans they supply are to very, very safe people. Where do you think they get their money from.......the Bank. And any funds they have would be very limited. Love to see the housing loan market rely on solicitors.

 

[Greg350]

No because they use...........cards and electronic banking. How do you think a business like a service station operated 40 years ago? Cash transactions, travel from the station to the bank carrying 30-40,000 cash every few days. Or a estate agency with numerous rentals, people paid them in cash, had to bring it to the bank, again thousands of dollars. This is not just about a person and their money on hand, business use to have massive amounts of cash to handle, the bank

 

[Greg350]

The reason people don’t use atm’s is the fees charged by banks and safety concerns. I work in retail and and find people are drawing out cash with their groceries as there is no fees and they feel safer. As for businesses that don’t except cash sales I don’t think that is right as cash is a legal tender therefore they can’t refuse it.

Have the correct account and you do not pay fees at your own bank's ATM.

Cash is legal tender, meaning it's the legal currency for use in Australia, it DOES NOT mean they must accept it. Been through this numerous times, look at the legislation, look at the RBA's website, tells you there in black and white.

 

[Janice McKay]

Ms Bullock. You should be protecting Australians not Banks. In doing what you are recommending is charging more people a fee for getting their own money out of a bank. When will this lunacy stop! When will banks start treating their customers with some respect and stop trying to keep our money from us by not supplying ATMs and Branches for us.

 

[mylittletibbies]

So because I worked in a bank 45 years ago I stick up for banks? hahaha, what a ridiculous notion.

Where are those jobs? Unemployment at 4.1%, hundred's of thousands of jobs that cannot be filled, you do know that businesses change, jobs move from one sector to another sector, often new sectors. If the banks don't need the staff why employ them. Should them spend money for people to sit around doing nothing? Maybe that's the job you'd like, do nothing.
Credit unions - banks with a different name, you don't think they make profits, they lookout for themselves as number one? Delusional. Solicitors loans, hahahahahahaha, come on get in the real world, the only loans they supply are to very, very safe people. Where do you think they get their money from.......the Bank. And any funds they have would be very limited. Love to see the housing loan market rely on solicitors.

Yes, you're right, that's why they always supplied loans to me, both for housing and business.
Their money came through clients ,not banks.
Well I've worked in business all my adult life, my parents had a large business employing almost 120 people in which I held a senior position and in later years started my own business.
If you think that people running their own businesses do nothing , then you are sadly mistaken.
We work a lot longer hours than pencil pushers in banks.
Nobody expects banks to not make a profit, but their profits are obscene. But I guess they need these profits to pay the obscene wages if their CEOs.

 

[Ronloby]

As I have said before. CASH is "LEGAL TENDER", so until the government declares a CASHLESS society then banks MUST have CASH available to ALL who want some. The banks have the government by the "short and curlies".

 

[Greg350]

As I have said before. CASH is "LEGAL TENDER", so until the government declares a CASHLESS society then banks MUST have CASH available to ALL who want some. The banks have the government by the "short and curlies".

And they do have it available, that doesn't mean they have to have it available on every corner, in every shop

 

[gamiry]

Michelle Bullock should perhaps
consider a different job. What a ridiculous comment.
How did everybody manage before they bought in cards and we all used cash
Banks should be made to keep ATMs available, especially in areas where they have shut
branches. They just get greedier and greedier, with OUR money.

my nearest branch is in Brisbane...over 400ks away.

 

[drambuie69]

Sorry 'bid13' , under the monetary and coinage act cash can be declined by any business, cash is legal tender however, the Act allows businesses the right to decline acceptance... I remember years ago a person would pay the Harbour Bridge toll with 1 and 2 cent pieces, he was proving a point, he would stop at the toll gates and empty a bag with the toll amount in coins. Cars backed up behind him every morning, the machine would jam up with the volume of coins. I attended a number of times, in my official capacity, to direct traffic, the then RTA posted a notice on the toll booths that 1,2 and 5 cent coins were not being accepted, the machines were modified to not accept any of those smaller coins. Funny how Government can change something in a very short time as trivial as that however, clearing trees in Koala areas takes years to rectify..

 

[Pommyoz]

As I have said before. CASH is "LEGAL TENDER", so until the government declares a CASHLESS society then banks MUST have CASH available to ALL who want some. The banks have the government by the "short and curlies".

And for knowledges sake, those short and curlies are the ones on the nape of your neck. NOT PUBIC HAIRS! Being held tightly by your neck, not your groin.

 

[Greg350]

my nearest branch is in Brisbane...over 400ks away.

You don't have a Post Office?

 

[Mina vriesekolk]

The banks remove an ATM when the need is not there for them anymore. Do you think ATM's run for free, they don't, they take a lot of money to run, if there are not enough people using a particular machine it's not viable so it's removed.

Of course there's always someone who would like to use a machine at a certain location, but you can't have a machine everywhere and the fact is, people like using cards. Electronic backing is an option for everyone, no one ever had to use it but people are, people are driving this change.

Of course the ATM’s do not run for free , but we have our money in the banks and the banks make an incredible amount of profit from using our money . They all knew that , everyone had to have creditcards , no charge and people thought this was too good to be true. Now we are all used to using a creditcard and the banks take away a lot of their ATM’s and you get charged at the shops for using your creditcard . I think this is not the right thing to do .

 

[IAN3005]

That may be so, but it appears that Banks will not be happy until they have no overheads and only profits.
People keep blindly using their cards, but are the first to scream when there are outages and their cards are useless.
They'll scream even louder when there's no cash and we get started being charged through the nose every time we use our cards.

And they will..... big time and there will be nothing the consumer will be able to do but suck it up.

 

[Miss Chris]

Well people certainly act as though it is,as was observed in the recent outages.
I am not stupid, of course I know businesses always have overheads. I was in businesses myself for many years. I was only making a point that Banks keep dreaming up more and more ways to cut staff, services etc to make more and more profits at the expense of their customers. If you don't think that we will be charged exhorbitant fees for using cards, when there is no longer any cash, and that people won't then start screaming about that,then you are living in lala land.
Banks maybe should remember that without our money they would be out of business.

I think that bank ‘owners’ have lost sight of why they exist….. I think they consider that the monies in their banks actually belong to them, and when a customer wants to access their money whether by cash or cash, then they charge a fee for every transaction……I personally look at these fees as the cost of buying our own money back……I mean I get that they provide a service but they also make huge profits from investments bought with customers money. It’s frightening to think about what banks end goal is…….. I think it’s to get rid of cash completely so that they have ultimate monopoly over how money is handled, and if they get complete control they can do whatever they want and hold our money to ransom unless we pay an exorbitant price to access it……….Anyway, that’s my take on it….

 

[Bezz]

The government will support the banks to close, and become a cashless society as Big Brother will be looking over you, and know exactly what you spend.

 

[Rob44]

Well, I am not whingeing. I remember when life was simply more easy because we didn't have the internet, we didn't have plastic cards and we could pay bills by cheque and the postal service delivered two postal deliveries a day AND a letter posted one day would get to one's letterbox next day, although that may not have been possible in Australia given the distances in Australia. But yes, we had fax machines for rapid communication and we had telephones and government-run utilities that hadn't been privatised and didn't keep one waiting on the telephone for half an hour or longer whilst pretending to be dealing with a vast number of callers because the utility did not employ enough people to answer the telephone. Even the telephone book was set out in a manner that enabled one to find governments' departments phone numbers easily and one didn't have to hunt through the white pages and yellow pages to find a doctor.

Just reminding those born after 1990 that the world used to worked very efficiently without "modern technology" being used at our cost to stuff-up everyday normal transactions.

 

[Rob44]

Someone used my credit card in NZ, $3000 dollars, the bank called ME hours later, I didn't know about it, three days later the money was back in my account.

The bank wears it, they rarely get the money back, hence the very high interest rates on credit cards, one of the reasons. 45 years ago the CBA was writing off 500 million in bad debts, the vast majority on overseas credit card fraudulent transactions, that's why there's a valid to date on cards, the fraud stops when the card expires.
You always hear stories about having problems with getting money back, but the vast, vast majority are refunded in a timely manner. The case you are talking about sounds complex, most are noting like that. Of course you can carry around cash all the time, have that stolen or lost and there is no way to refund that, it's gone for good.

45 years ago was 1988 by my reckoning. I got my first plastic CBA credit card in 1984. The cashier told me that I wouldn't need my CBA passbook any more. That was the day I told the cashier that that bit of plastic would one day make her redundant as the banks wouldn't need her any more. She wouldn't believe me.

Ah well.........it would seem from the bankers' attitudes that we don't even need the local bank any more.........

 

[Kogelberger]

Michele Rennick SHOULD NOT BE IN THE POSITION SHE IS, what a thing to say to pay a fee when using cash, on a cheque maybe yes, BUT NOT CASH, there are thousands upon thousands of people who are only able to use cash, bloody disgraceful.

 

[Gunpark]

Oh, those poor banks. What Greg doesn't see to realise they are using the depositors money to make their profit. Without depositors there would be no banks. Banks became necessary when it became unsafe to hold large amounts of money at home and that is still the case, so the banks are providing a service. Then some banker decided he could make money out of loaning that money of yours to someone else and make money out of your money by lending it and adding a charge for the lending and giving you a small amount of what was charged to the borrower. That was going great until the 'bean counters' got involved and said to the banks you can make more money out of this and that spawned a bunch of people called "economists" who perfected price gouging and got us into the state we are in today. There is very little real honesty or loyalty in big business these days.