Cashpoints spread to cafes

THE PROLIFERATION of cashpoint machines looks set to be extended to restaurants and cafes across the country following two distribution deals unveiled by cash machines operator Moneybox today.

Moneybox is to be the preferred supplier of cash machines to catering giant Compass for the next five years. It will identify suitable locations for cashpoint machines throughout Compass catering outlets, including Whistlestop, Harry Ramsden‘s, Caffe Ritazza and Upper Crust.

Moneybox has also secured a similar five-year deal with Moto, the UK‘s largest motorway services operator. Moneybox will install cashpoint machines at Moto sites once an existing agreement expires in the next two years.

Customers who want to withdraw cash from Moneybox machines may well have to pay a fee.

More than one in three cashpoints across the UK now charge a fee when you take out cash, and the charges are estimated to cost UK customers more than £60m a year, according to research from the Nationwide last month.

The number of fee-charging automated teller machines (ATMs), normally found in petrol stations, shops and post offices, has risen by 40% in the last six months, from about 13,000 to 18,5000.

In April this year Link, the organisation which runs the cash machine network, made it compulsory for all fee charging cash machines to display an 'early warning' to customers. This should take the form of clearly visible stickers or an on-screen message, telling people they will be charged for taking out money.

The big four banks, Barclays, Lloyds TSB, HSBC and NatWest/RBS, don‘t charge a fee for any of their cashpoints, whether in branches or out or in post offices or petrol stations.

But RBS has acquired Hanco, the largest operator of fee-charging cash machines. Meanwhile HBOS (Halifax/Bank of Scotland) has sold 817 of its non-fee charging cash machines to Cardpoint, another fee-charging operator.