Long Lines at the ATM?

Posted 2007-12-13

Did you see the long line at the ATM yesterday? Besides the typical Christmas spending, which APACS predicted would approximate £53 billion this year (a rise of 4% over 2006), there is another reason for the influx at the bank.

Reportedly, rather than using credit cards, consumers are driven to the ATM machine to fund their Christmas purchases over fears of the credit crunch. In fact, ATM machine operator LINK released findings that cash withdrawals for the first ten days of December are up 7.1% from November, a 2.1% increase from past years. At the same time, credit card company MasterCard reported that the annual retail sales growth rate dropped from 4.5% to 4% in November.

This new information shows that the opposite of APACS’ November prediction occurred; APACS predicted that cash spending would fall 5% over the Christmas period, dropping from £19.8 billion in 2006 to £18.9 billion for the 2007 season. So far, as the lines at the ATM show, the trend seems to be in the opposite direction for this season.

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