Canadian bank DirectCash Payments is poised for its biggest acquisition yet in the Australian ATM sector.DirectCash, which trades as DC Payments, is understood to have made a successful offer for First Data Corporation's Cashcard business.  Payments sector executives with access to primary sources on the agreement say First Data and DC Payments agreed to terms on a sale in recent days.These sources put the value of the sale in the order of A$70 million. This is a drastic fall in value for Cashcard, a business acquired by First Data from a consortium of Australian shareholders in 2004 for a rumoured US$280 million.Matthew Thomas, managing director at DC Payments Australia, did not respond to calls from Banking Day yesterday.In Australia DC Payments operates a fleet of 7700 ATMs. Cashcard's 5500 ATMs will bring the total to over 13,000 machines and account for more than three quarters of the independent ATM market (that is, ATMs not directly owned by a bank or authorised deposit-taking institution).Since its takeover of the business once known as Customers Ltd in the late 2000s DC Payments has continued to amalgamate niche ATM operators such as ezeATM and GRG International.The business model of the entire ATM sector is under challenge from the consumer shift to non-cash payments, a trend that may help DC Payments steer its offer for Cashcard past the ACCC.According to the latest Reserve Bank of Australia figures, consumers made 56.3 million cash withdrawals from ATMs each month, on average, during the 2015/16 financial year.That is a 6.6 per cent fall compared with the 2014/15 financial year, when consumers made 60.3 million withdrawals a month on average.The rate of decline has picked up. The number of ATM withdrawals fell 4.9 per cent from 2013/14 to 2014/15.Back in 2010/11, when ATM use peaked, the number of withdrawals was close to 70 million a month on average. There has been a fall in usage of close to 20 per cent since then.The value of ATM withdrawals in 2015/16 was an average of A$11.6 billion a month, compared with $11.8 billion a month in 2014/15 - a fall of 1.7 per cent.The rate of decline between 2013/14, when withdrawals were worth an average of $12 billion a month, and 2014/15 was also 1.7 per cent.