The test was conclusive. After several months of reflection and testing, three banking groups – BNP Paribas, Société Générale and Crédit Mutuel Alliance and its subsidiary CIC – have decided to pool the management of their bank ATMs, within a joint company. , 2SF. A brand common to the four brands has also been created, cashservices, with an anthracite gray logo. It will be gradually rolled out to all ATMs from the end of 2023 until 2025.
A third of the park
At the end of 2022, the fleet concerned by this pooling covers approximately 15,000 machines, or 30% of the current total fleet (47,800 machines at the end of 2021, according to figures from the Banque de France). This project responds to a logic of cost reduction: how to make profitable a fleet of machines, the maintenance and supply of banknotes of which are expensive, while this service remains weakly charged to cardholders. Withdrawals are generally free from an ATM of the bearer’s bank, and charged around one euro from an ATM of another bank (moved withdrawal).
This pooling of resources is unprecedented in France. However, French banks very quickly understood the interest of cooperating in electronic banking, in particular with the creation of the GIE Cartes Bancaires, and it is this interbanking that has made the success of the bank card in France. The banks then embarked on a frantic race to equip ATMs in the 1980s and 1990s… before realizing that the operation was becoming an increasingly heavy burden, despite the increase in the commission that pay between the banks on the displaced withdrawals.
Slow erosion
But household behavior is changing and the use of cash continues to decline, slowly but surely, with an acceleration linked to the health crisis and the raising of the contactless payment limit by card to 50 euros. The number of ATMs has been declining by 2 to 3% each year since 2012, with a more pronounced decrease in towns. Despite the decline in the number of ATMs, the Banque de France, guardian of the dogma of access to cash, always emphasizes that “99% of French people live less than 15 minutes by car” from a ticket machine.
What makes all the interest of this pooling for the banks: avoid multiplying in the same street automatons whose frequency of use stagnates, or even decreases. In 2021, the average withdrawal is 113 euros for a total volume up slightly (+5%), following the sharp drop in 2020 during the health crisis.
For now, the three banking groups are not disclosing their ATM reduction targets. But communication for customers is already well established: a customer of one of the four banking networks concerned will have a higher number of ATMs at his disposal, and therefore fewer inappropriate withdrawals to pay in the use of his bank on a daily basis.
