What if they no longer exist? Very practical for withdrawing cash or remitting checks for cashing, bank ATMs are part of the local economic fabric. For their part, the Bitcoin ATM allow anyone with a BTC address to deposit and withdraw money easily. But, the shadow of an imminent disappearance hovers over these distributorswhatever their nature.
ATMs no longer attract change
As the Banque des Territoires mentions in this article, nearly 1,500 distributors disappear each year. So, strategy of the banks to reduce their costs, or global conspiracy to monitor all your expenses by imposing scriptural money ?
As often, it is probably a slightly more nuanced mix of these two facts.
First of all, it would be foolish to deny the overall cost represented by these machines which are, in fact, used less and less by bank customers. But, it would be equally silly to deny that financial regulation seems to be moving towards ever more control.
>> During the crypto winter, take advantage of low prices, register on eToro (commercial link) <<
Why dispute what the majority seems to happily accept?
You like me hold less and less cash. The colossal expansion of card and mobile payments tends to make cash less useful.
However, if cash payments allowed a certain declarative flexibility, none of this is possible vis-à-vis payments made by card or bank transfer. All these operations are traced and recorded in a large computer register. This, unlike Bitcoin, is neither public nor decentralized.
However, rather than fighting to maintain the freedom linked to cash, the majority of the population is abandoning cash in favor of scriptural money, which is easier to keep and use. This means more fees for merchants, and less privacy for customers, but who really cares?
It is also true that the banks, which continue to publish excellent results, would not lose much by maintaining these machines which, in many villages, provide services essential to everyday life.
On another side, the worrying expansion of nonsensical rules related to flow controls that are officially aimed at combating money laundering and the financing of terrorism (LCB-FT) make banks ever more cautious about depositing and withdrawing large sums of cash. None of them want to find themselves pinned down for complicity in the financing of terrorism. This sword of Damocles now weighs on each and every one of us, for each operation that is unjustified, atypical or deemed inconsistent with your profile. Under the guise of fighting against fraud, you are always asked for more details, more transparency.
This is certainly the reason why some MEPs seem to have regained a certain closeness to cash payments as the Football World Cup approaches.
Banks group together to reduce ATM management costs
A few days ago, four of the largest French banks (BNPP, Société Générale, Crédit Mutuel, Alliance Fédérale and CIC, which is a subsidiary of Crédit Mutuel), announced that they were pooling their distributors in order to ” sustainably perpetuate the self-service banking to which the French are attached “.
Understand that it is rationalize the geographic location of distributors by eliminating where it is judged that they are too numerous (or not profitable enough) to optimize the maintenance and operating costs of these machines. A positive point for customers, they will be able to use any distributor of the four banks associated with “Cash Services”, which will allow them to benefit from a theoretically larger number of distributors.
It is still too early to determine what the real consequences of this pooling of resources will be.. Hopefully, this is not a harbinger of the depopulation of local banking services, while most banking networks are increasing the closures of branches and other points of sale.
UK Regulator Chases Illegal Bitcoin ATMs
On the other side of the spectrum, there are ATMs allowing anyone to deposit cash to buy cryptocurrencies. Or to sell them to recover banknotes.
If the expansion of these machines was very strong at first, the trend is now tending to slow down considerably.
First of all, ATMs that allowed cryptocurrency transactions without identity verification are disappearing or even dying out. Replaced by models that require the customer to scan his identity document before being able to carry out any operation, regardless of the amount of the latter.
Then, and as we just mentioned here Bitcoin ATMs have become a prime target for the English regulator which fights against the emergence of distributors not registered with the FCA (Financial Conduct Authority) and are therefore illegal.
The companies that operate these ATMs across the Channel, heralding the banking apocalypse, have therefore been ordered to withdraw them immediately. Otherwise, they would face heavy fines.. To date, the distributors have not been withdrawn and none of them have been registered with the FCA.
While the adoption of cryptos by the general public could be greatly boosted by the development of vending machines offering bitcoin, thehe fight against money laundering greatly slows down this expansion. Cryptos have long been accused of all evil in this matter, even though the blockchain is an inefficient way to cover its tracks. More than ever, the scarcity of cash and the control of financial flows must lead each of us to ask ourselves the right questions.
For you, blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies will soon be at the heart of the daily life of each of us. You can expose yourself to Bitcoin, Ethereum and other tokens on the rising exchange. Register now on eToro and start familiarizing yourself with this ecosystem (commercial link).