The ATM business is sometimes described as “recession proof”, and stories like this are one reason why.
U.S. consumers are withdrawing more money from ATMs, likely the result of the economic recession, industry insiders say. In September 2008, when the recession was official, consumers started relying more heavily on cash and debit, and less on credit.
Gary Faulkner, the executive vice president and chief marketing officer of Morphis Cash Forecasting Software of Dallas, says it was around that time that U.S. ATM withdrawals started going up. He said many of his ATM customers started complaining that the Morphis forecasting tool was not meeting targets, and ATMs were often low on cash because of increased withdrawal amounts. Faulkner says ATMs that had been effectively managed by Morphis’ system for years were suddenly running out of cash.
“Starting in September 2008, customers were complaining that the forecasting was not right,” he said. “Nearly universally, our customers saw an increase in transactions and an increase in cash withdrawals per transaction.”
Faulkner says the volume of transactions increased as well. In fact, Faulkner estimates that the overall cash withdrawals from each transaction increased from roughly $65 to $75 a transaction to about $100 a transaction.
We’ve written before about the practice of using cash accounting to manage tight budgets — withdrawing a certain amount of money for holiday shopping or a weekly budget, and when the cash is gone, stop spending. We’ve also noted why a recession can be good for ATM usage.
Now the numbers are in. ATMs really *are* recession proof.
