Access to Cash Pilots Pick Up Speed in the UK

The UK’s Post Office is not a bank and does not aspire to be one. However, it does provide essential cash services on behalf of all banks to all communities left behind when banks close. The banks still have a duty to be available for more complex products – typically now served through call centres, or video calls.

Recognising that there is still a need for face-to-face customer service for those products, the Post Office has now opened two ‘utility’ banking hubs – called, unsurprisingly, BankHUBs - as part of the UK’s Community Access to Cash Pilots (CACP) in conjunction with the UK’s five major banks (Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds, NatWest and Santander) as part of a trial through to the end of 2021. One was opened in Rochford in England and the other in Cambuslang in Scotland, both towns without any remaining bank branches.