HOW IS COMMERCIAL CASH CHANGING?
Cash usage is top of mind for the ATM industry and the payment industry more broadly. Customer demands surrounding payment options are changing and along with it the needs of commercial organizations, but how are they changing specifically?
Cathy Isom, SVP, senior product manager, First Citizens Bank and Stacy Diamond, executive director, global treasury management, Wells Fargo addressed how commercial customer demands around cash is changing during a panel at Cash in the USA on Oct. 22 in Nashville, Tennessee. Lee Williamson, managing director of CMS Analytics, moderated the panel.
When asked how cash usage is changing, Diamond said that overall, "there's no question that as a payment type, it [cash] is less used than in previous years."
However, she emphasized that "it is still quite prevalent," and the trends of who use cash and why they use it has remained steady. As a different panel by the Federal Reserve demonstrated, cash usage has hit a floor and has kept steady since 2020.
Isom said, in her banks case, due to acquisitions of other banks, demand for cash has increased. This includes commercial customers involved in the hemp market who rely heavily on cash.
"Retailers in particular see that cash is not going away and they need to get better at handling it," Diamond said.
Even in the case of big businesses, like McDonald's they see a need for cash. Diamond said that McDonald's found that they lost revenue by not enabling cash payments on their self-ordering kiosks. Customers would come in and see that cash wasn't accepted and they would leave rather than ordering from the register up front.
However, retailers often struggle with armored transportation for cash, due to inconsistent service. In addition, they don't want to send employees with large amounts of cash to the branch.
As a result, many commercial partners are adopting cash vaults for security and fraud prevention. Diamond said banks are also adopting commercial friendly ATMs that can accept larger cash deposits.
This is part of a larger bank strategy of reducing the amount of corporate and commercial cash going through the branch. Although Diamond emphasized that you still need to accommodate customers who want to use the branches for cash deposits.
One major challenge with commercial cash usage is tracking deposits. Businesses want to know how quickly from the time they deposit the cash to when it will be available in their accounts for use.
Isom said, " We are working to roll out a cash visibility app for our customers to track deposits from the time they leave the customer to the time they get credit at the bank." Cesar Zambrano Karina Zambrano Jose Aguirre Bill Cass EuroTechzam S.A. Zieta 18 S. de R.L. de C.V. ATM Industry Association (ATMIA) The National ATM Council, Inc. Cash Is King SA