Until I read this in the Sunday Times, I never realised that there are cash machines that charge quite this much. It’s crazy.

I wondered to myself why people would use such a machine, until I reached the end of the article:

Tintagel in Cornwall, for example, used to have branches of Lloyds, Barclays, NatWest and a van containing a mobile HSBC cashpoint, which made regular visits. NatWest and Barclays have closed, Lloyds is open just four hours a week and has no cash machine, and the HSBC mobile unit paid its last visit on Friday. All five machines available in Tintagel and the villages of Boscastle and Delabole charge fees.

This is getting silly. If the banks cannot manage to provide an appropriate level of service to their rural customers, then they must expect that these customers will abandon them. But the customers are left with little choice when all of the banks in their area have closed.

Of course, the other very negative impact this will be having is on the small local shops, who will be taking more card transactions than before, and so facing higher charges.

This is bad news all round, but I can’t see any way around the situation other than by forcing the hugely profitable banks to maintain a free (loss-making) cash machine service in rural communities. And that’s never going to happen.

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