This Wednesday (27 June 2007) marks the fortieth anniversary of the installation of the world’s first cash machine.  On 27 June 1967 actor Reg Varney opened the first automatic cash dispensing machine at a branch of Barclays bank in Enfield, Middlesex.

Since then banks and building societies and increasingly independent providers have been installing cash machines across the UK, transforming the way we access our cash.  The latest figures from 2006 reveal:

• There were 60,468 cash machines situated across the UK at the end of 2006;
• The total value of withdrawals from cash machines has reached £180 billion – an average of £5,702 per second;
• Cash machine withdrawals by volume has reached 2.8 billion – an average of 87 withdrawals every second;
• Cash machines owned by bank and building societies continue to process the bulk of transactions - 95 per cent by cash value and 94 per cent by volume;
• 65 per cent of cash demand in the UK is met by cash machines;
• On average there are 1,012 cash machines per one million inhabitants around the country;
• In 2005 Britons held the record for the most withdrawals per head in the EU, visiting cash machines nearly twice as often as the EU average*; and
• Two thirds of all personal payments in volume terms are still made in cash.

Sandra Quinn, director of communications at APACS, said:

“With nearly 60,500 cash machines across the UK, we expect to find them on every high street, withdrawing over £180 billion of cash in 2006 and it is hard for most of us to imagine what life was like before the arrival of the cash machine forty years ago.  Now we can use them to not only access our cash, but check our account balance, order cheque books, change our PIN (personal identification number), request statements, pay bills, make deposits, transfer money and even top up our mobile phones.”

By 2016 APACS expects cash machines to provide 81 per cent of our cash requirements as cheques and passbook use continue to decline.  We also expect that with the exception of mobile phone top-ups, the other facilities offered by cash machines will decline with the greater use of online and telephone banking being the likely contributor for the fall.