Lessons Learnt Managing a Declining ATM Estate

As the number of ATMs and use declines, authorities face challenges relating to competition policy and appropriate regulations.

This is true in Finland, as elsewhere, and the Bank of Finland has written about their experience ¹, learning lessons from the past, the experience of others and the extensive academic work done on this topic.

The paper defines ATM fees and usage fees, and their relative impact on providers and consumers, and finds that regulating interchange fees is a better way to maintain cost effective access to cash than focusing on foreign fees.

Is cash important?

The paper starts by stating why cash continues to be an important payment instrument that the central bank wants to maintain, which means having ATMs readily available to the population.