Bank & Building Society Cash Machine Services

Until late 1998 all cash machines in the UK were owned and operated by banks and building societies (BBS), with the majority of machines at or inside their own premises.

In 2000, following a good deal of public scrutiny, the majority of banks and building societies agreed not to levy a charge on any customers withdrawing cash from either their own or another BBS machine. As such the vast majority of bank machines remain free to use and do not charge a fee.

Today, 97% of cash withdrawn is from cash machines owned by banks and building societies and, since 1994, the average annual amount withdrawn from each BBS cash machine has increased steadily from some £3.3 million to almost £4.8 million.

Availability

The availability of bank and building society cash machines is regularly monitored to gauge the impact of machine and system faults on overall performance. The statistics are collated by APACS and shared with the cash machine owners to enable them to benchmark their performance against industry averages. Throughout 2004 the average amount of time that cash machines were available was between 95% and 96%, with the majority registering a higher than average uptime in all but four months of 2004. In a little over two-thirds of cases of non-availability there was a fault within the machine or a communications failure. Running out of cash and general maintenance each accounted for some 10% - 15% of downtime.

Commitment to transparency

All of the major banks and building societies are members of the payments industry and are committed to providing clear and concise information on cash machine charges to their customers.

One of the ways in which this commitment is communicated is via The Banking Code, a voluntary code that sets out standards of good banking practice for financial institutions when they are dealing with personal customers in the UK.

The 2005 Banking Code (Section 5, page 9 - Cash machine charges) sets out the information that financial institutions are committed to provide to customers on cash machine charges. This commitment is listed below (for illustrative purposes 'you' means the customer and 'we' means the financial institution the customer deals with):

• "We will give you details of any charges we make for using cash machines when we issue the card.
• You will not be charged more than once for any transaction at one of our cash machines.
• When you use a cash card at one of our cash machine, a message on the screen will tell you, before you commit to making a withdrawal, the amount (if any) you will be charged for the transaction and who is making the charge.
• When you use a card other than a cash card at one of our cash machines, a message on the screen will tell you, before you commit to making a withdrawal, the amount (if any) we will charge you for the transactions. The message may also tell you that the card issuers may charge you for the transaction.
• We will show cash machine charges on your statement of account."