I need a haircut. In fact, it’s late. So, with a free weekend morning, I recently headed to the barber for a well-deserved trim.

The hairdresser in question only takes cash. It’s a bit awkward for me as someone who rarely carries physical cash – much to the disappointment of This is Money editor and cash champion Lee Boyce.

My usual routine is to stop at a nearby branch of Sainsbury’s where there is an ATM and withdraw the necessary funds (now £21, not an ideal amount to pay in notes) before heading out. go to the hairdresser.

Only two minutes out of my way at most.

Cardless: Cash-only businesses suffer if the ATM network fails its users

On Saturday morning, with teary eyes, I realized that the Sainsbury’s bank ATM would not accept my debit card. Odd.

Then I saw the message on the screen saying something like “This ATM is currently unavailable, sorry for any inconvenience”.

GOOD. I wasn’t that embarrassed – there was another ATM around the corner, after all.

Imagine my confusion when I arrived at the second ATM, this time at a Halifax branch, only to find that it gave the same message as the previous one.

Unlike some places in the UK where there are now few or no ATMs, I luckily had plenty of ATMs nearby.

A quick check of my phone showed me that luckily there was a third, this time with two machines available, just a few hundred meters away.

This couldn’t go any worse, could it? This time, I didn’t even reach the machine to find out that it too was out of order. As I approached, I noticed a concerned fellow citizen pacing back and forth between the two machines on either side of the Santander entrance, a disappointed look on his face.

Again: “This ATM is currently unavailable, sorry for the inconvenience.”

Forgotten: some areas faced a 30% reduction in vending machines between October 2019 and January 2024

At this point, in pouring rain without an umbrella and assuming that I could probably be faced with the same story again if I took a detour to a fourth bank branch, I resigned myself to another week without a new haircut.

But what was behind all this? Was it a massive failure or had I just been unlucky?

Link, the UK’s ATM network, told This is Money: “We checked the machines mentioned, and the incidents do not appear to be linked, one was out of money, one had been vandalized and one had a defect requiring an engineer.” .

“Therefore, this appears to be an unfortunate coincidence. All ATM operators have a vested interest in keeping their ATMs running, not only as a customer service but also for the revenue they generate, and they will have local staff to repair the ATMs or engineers on call in the event of more serious breakdowns.

This is confirmed by Halifax, which said its ATM was faulty at the time, while Sainsbury’s said its machine had been vandalized.

An unfortunate coincidence, perhaps. But there are many factors that can cause an ATM to go out of service – and if their overall numbers are falling, that can surely only mean that more people like me will struggle to access cash.

Nearly 10,000 vending machines have been closed in the past five years, with another 23,000 expected to be closed, leaving only 15,000 free vending machines nationwide. Five years ago there were 50,000 free machines.

According to Santander, the unavailability of a number of ATMs in a specific area could be the result of attempts by fraudsters to install card capture devices in some ATMs, or to deliberately damage others in order to to push customers towards the one they faked.

Another possibility, the report said, is that multiple banks use the same cash processing or delivery company, which could lead to ATM shutdowns if demand exceeds expectations. However, he adds that this is relatively unlikely.

So it was probably just bad luck. If I had walked to a fourth ATM, I probably could have made a withdrawal.

However, in areas that are not served by as high a number of ATMs, someone looking for cash might find themselves running out of ATMs to use.

Not being able to withdraw £30 was a minor inconvenience for me, but for cash-dependent older people or small businesses who run most of their business with physical cash, this slowdown could prove debilitating.

Many businesses are hesitant to accept card payments because of the fees that payment processors such as Mastercard and Visa charge on each transaction.

This is why many companies that accept cards do not accept American Express due to that company’s higher fees.

Sometimes, more simply, they have accepted cash for generations and are too stubborn or too determined to introduce card payments, but in today’s cash-dwindling society they could suffer.

It’s also true that some businesses don’t accept cards because they aren’t completely honest with the IRS – but I’d like to think they’re in the minority.

The hairdresser lost my business over the weekend simply because he didn’t accept the payment methods I had access to.

In 2024, I don’t think it would be a mistake for me, or others in similar circumstances, to consider rerouting not to yet another ATM, but rather to a hair salon that allows card payments.

However, this could mean the end of many of these small businesses.