ATM pair count on cash resilience
Two independent ATM operators, Next Payments and Total ATM have combined, lifting the Next ATM fleet by 250 to 2250.
Tim Wildash, chief executive of Next, confirmed the takeover of Total yesterday.
Next is an associate of Macquarie Group, which holds 47 per cent of the equity.
More than half of ATMs in Australia are owned by independent operators such as Next, though the number of operators is in decline as business models respond to market reform.
Direct charging, with clearer advice to consumers on fees since 2009, has encouraged consumers to make fewer ATM withdrawals, and at the same time the use of cash has been declining. Withdrawals have fallen from an average of 75 a day per ATM in 2010 to 60 a day last year, the Reserve Bank of Australia wrote in an assessment earlier this year.
For all independent ATM operators, aggregate daily withdrawals are around 60 per cent of the level pre-reform, though demand patterns may be stabilising.
Monthly ATM cash withdrawals at terminals owned by this sector were 22.5 million in August 2016, the most recent RBA data shows. This number hovered around 20 million in January and February.
The Next ATM fleet, Wildash explained, may be more resilient to adverse trends in the industry than is typical.
"Next Payments like for like transaction decline is only 1.4 per cent over the last year, whereas retail banks are experiencing declines as steep as five per cent to six per cent," he wrote in notes emailed to Banking Day.
Total was a latecomer to the once crowed independent ATM sector in Australia, founded in 2012 by Tom Trainor, a former associate of Wildash.
Next entered the fray a year later, steered by industry veteran Wildash, the founder of ATM Solutions in the 1990s (an entity later sold to ASX-listed Customers Limited, and now owned by DC Payments).
Next now manages seven per cent of the ATM fleet in Australia, a niche operator alongside the DC/Cashcard combine which is the custodian of 34 per cent of all ATMs, a much larger share than that of any major bank.
Wildash said Next would "continue to aggressively seek new sites" in a sector in which DC is becoming a dominant force via its takeover of Cashcard.