Cash: the South Wales town running out of machines – BBC News

In Treorchy’s Bute Street, Sara Bailey runs coffee shop Hot Gossip, and says her business and others have suffered since Barclays closed its doors.

“When Barclays went he needed the cash machine he had with him,” she said, adding that bank staff told her it was “the busiest cash machine in South Wales”.

There are two other ATMs in the city, she said, but they are struggling to meet demand as they run out of money “on some days once or even twice a day.”

“We’re a cash only business here, so we’ve had to turn away customers. A few other businesses here have had to do the same thing,” she said.

A few doors down from Hot Gossip, Nicola Lund helps her father run Top Cards, a greeting card shop, where the ATM shortage is also having an impact.

“The post office is also a long way into town, so older people have to walk there to withdraw money, and they don’t want to walk back – I don’t blame them,” she said, adding a comment. The nearby phone shop said footfall had declined since the bank closed.

“It makes me worry about the future of the company,” she says.

Barclays said in a statement that consumer behavior has changed, with the majority now choosing online banking, which was reflected in the Treorchy branch.

The company said it had provided a mobile van two days a week since the branch closed.

Treorchy isn’t the only one losing its banks in the area.

Half an hour away, Mountain Ash faces a similar situation.

The city has been without a bank since the last branch, Lloyds, closed in 2017.

A ‘banking hub’ is expected to open in the city next year, where customers of any bank can withdraw and deposit cash and make payments.

The service will join seven other services in Wales – two of which are currently open, in Welshpool, Powys and Prestatyn, Denbighshire.

Other locations are listed for Abergele in County Conwy, Abertillery in Blaenau Gwent, Morriston in Swansea, Porthcawl in County Bridgend and Risca in County Caerphilly.

A temporary hub has opened in Treorchy on the site of the former Barclays bank on Bute Street.

Like others in Wales, it is run by Cash Access UK – operating Monday to Friday between 9am and 5pm – which said it is looking for a permanent home for the hub.

Research by consumer organization Which? By the end of 2025, Wales is expected to lose two-thirds of the bank branches that were open in 2015, leaving just 188 in the country.

The Welsh Affairs Committee has launched an investigation into the issue and notes that the number of branches of banks and building societies in Wales has fallen from 695 in 2012 to 435 in 2022, with 22 closures of major bank branches already announced by 2024.

Adrian Buckle, head of research at industry association UK Finance, said there was an increasing trend for banks to review branch costs.

“If you go back 15 years, six out of 10 payments we made were made with cash, but last year this had dropped to about 14% of payments,” he said.

Mr Buckle said that while he does not expect bank branches to become a thing of the past, the way banks operate on the high street could change, including the likely presence of banking centres.

‘It is no longer financially viable to have five or six separate banks with their own branches. But they can now share a branch and offer that face-to-face banking service to customers in the region who want to bank that way.

“I really think this is something that will benefit the entire industry more, and that will be good for consumers,” he said.