To mark the anniversary, Barclays painted one of its ATMs gold
People will continue to use banknotes for many more decades, said Victoria Cleland, chief cashier of the Bank of England, on the 50th anniversary of the first ATM. According to her, although people have become less frequent users of physical money – banknotes and coins – the Bank does not intend to stop issuing them.
Victoria Cleland noted that 94% of the adult population of Britain regularly use ATMs. More than half of Britons use ATMs at least once a week. But in about half of cases, people still pay for purchases with cash. In addition, says the Bank of England's chief cashier, many Britons keep their savings in cash.
Rahil Ahmed, head of customer service at Barclays, agrees. "Although in recent years our customers have increasingly preferred digital banking or paying for goods and services with cards, cash still plays an important role in people's lives when they go to the supermarket or buy coffee on the go. And we are very proud of the role Barclays has played in the development of ATMs," he says.
The first ATM appeared after Barclays signed a contract with Scottish inventor John Shepherd-Barron (died in 2010). The negotiations and signing of the contract were accompanied by pink gin.
"I thought it would be nice if I could have access to my own money wherever I was in the UK or any other country in the world," he told the BBC in 2007. "I remembered vending machines where you can buy chocolate bars, and I thought that chocolate bars could be replaced with money."
At first, not everything went smoothly. When the first ATM was installed in Zurich, it kept breaking down. Eventually it turned out that it was too close to where two tram lines crossed, and their wires were interfering with its operation.
There are now 70,000 ATMs in the UK and 176 million registered plastic cards. Each year, using these cards, people withdraw 180 billion pounds sterling ($230 billion) from British ATMs.
ATMs are now gradually mutating into "bank branches in a box." ATM manufacturer NCR says that about 80% of transactions for which people come to the bank can be done by the customer themselves through an ATM.
Portugal leads Western European countries in the number of ATMs per capita – there are 1,516 per million people. Sweden has the fewest ATMs, as it is leading the Scandinavian trend toward a cashless society. There are only 333 ATMs per million people there.