Financial Inclusion Decision 2018
Financial Inclusion Decision 2018
In LINK’s Final Decision and Impact Assessment on the results of its Interchange Consultation, published on 31st January 2018, the Board of LINK set out its commitment to maintain free access to cash for many years to come through an extensive footprint of ATMs with the same coverage as now. The date of this commitment started from 1st February 2018. This included a commitment to leave interchange unchanged for all existing free ATMs 1 kilometre or more away from another free ATM, to ensure that LINK’s reduction in interchange would not give a reason for closure.
These ATMs are known as Protected ATMs. This also initially included a commitment to apply at LINK’s discretion a premium of up to 30 pence to deal with specific problems with free coverage of ATMs caused by loss of a Protected ATM. On 1st April 2019, LINK introduced additional premiums that can significantly increase payments to ATM operators by up to £2.75 per cash withdrawal. Premiums will be made available to all eligible Protected machines; these measures are aimed at safeguarding free-to-use ATMs in remote and rural areas.
Should these premiums not deal with a particular situation, then LINK has the ability to directly commission ATMs to provide free access.
The Board has decided to publish the total number of Protected ATMs and the number where free access has been removed through closure or by being turned into charging ATMs. Reports will be provided on a regular basis. The reports will set out an analysis of the number of Protected ATMs no longer transacting and, after identifying where there is alternative access to cash provision (such as a Post Office counter providing free cash access), and where there is no public impact (for example, because the site was not accessible to the general public, e.g. it was within a closed company site), it shows the resultant number of sites that will be targeted for replacement with premiums. Note that where the loss is due to a security reason such as a raid, and there are no willing site owners, LINK will not plan a replacement until the security situation is judged safe again by local site retailers and ATM operators. In addition to this, LINK also publishes on its website the number of free and charging ATMs by parliamentary constituency.