While the use of cash has been rapidly declining in recent years due to the advent of new technologies such as contactless payments, a recent report estimated that some eight million Britons would struggle without cash.
With concerns that Covid-19 could be passed on through physical money transactions, many shops (around one in ten according to consumer group Which?) are refusing non-contactless forms of payment.
ATM makers Diebold Nixdorf expect that the crisis will see cash transactions plummet by 30 per cent over the whole of 2020 and drop by another 10 per cent in 2021.
With the number of physical bank branches also declining, the company believes that ATMs could find a new role carrying out some of their functions.
ATMs could, for example, be given deposit-taking abilities, along with new technology features such as mobile phone authentication, bio-metrics and facial-recognition technology.
Matt Phillips, vice president and head of financial services...