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Americans and Australians are using ATMs less than they did two years ago, while British adults are the biggest and most frequent users of the machines that debuted 50 years ago in their country. But Americans are more willing than their English-speaking compatriots to pay ATM fees.
Those are some of they key findings from a three-country online survey of ATM usage sponsored by Reston, Va.-based data-communication services provider Transaction Network Services Inc. TNS commissioned an outside research firm to query just over 1,000 adults in May in each country.
TNS sponsored a similar consumer survey in the same countries in 2015, and that one found that a plurality of respondents in all three visited an ATM once a week. This year, however, 34% of the the Americans said they use an ATM once a month, 21% once a week, and 16% once very two weeks.
The number of Americans who eschew ATMs altogether rose from 21% in the earlier survey to 29% in 2017.
In Australia, 31% of respondents said they use an ATM once a month and an equal number said once a week, while 2% use the machines once every two weeks, and 16% never use them.
Those findings stand in contrast to the U.K., where 38% of respondents still visit an ATM once a week, much more than 27% once a month and 25% once every two weeks. Only 10% of Britons never use an ATM.
“We see that the U.S. and Australia are witnessing a shift in usage patterns. In 2015, all three countries consistently reported ‘once a week’ as the top answer, but in the 2017 data set we can see a move to less frequent usage in these two countries,” TNS said in its survey report.
The majority of respondents in all three countries use ATMs solely for cash withdrawals: 66% in Australia, 62% in the U.S., and 54% in the U.K. Younger adults, however, tend to use ATMs for more services. Some 53% of U.K. respondents ages 18 to 24 years and 43% of Australians in the same age group said they use ATMs for more than just getting cash.
Regarding the sometimes contentious issue of fees, about one-quarter of all respondents said they would pay a “small token charge” to use an ATM, TNS said. U.S. respondents are more willing than consumers in the U.K. and Australia to pay a fee, though the number is declining: 31% this year versus 37% in 2015.
Willingness to pay a fee actually rose in the other two countries: in the U.K., 18% this year compared with 15% in 2015; and 28% in Australia, up slightly from 27% two years ago.
