how long have cash machines been in general use in britain?

Answer 1

the first one wasintroduced in 1967 but the earliest i remember them was in the early 1980s

Answer 2

I got my first job in Reading in 1979. The Nat West Bank gave me three plastic, hole punched, cards that I could put in a machine in the bank wall in Reading. It would then give me £10 for each card I put in: it swallowed the card which the bank then sent back so I could use it again. There weren't many such machines, which limited their usefulness.

The next year, 1980, I moved to Preston, and I got a magnetised card just like the current debit cards shortly afterwards. And this very rapidly became usable anywhere. So cash machines came into general use if not in 1980 in the early 1980s.

There may have been the very first cash machine in Enfield in the 1960s, but if so it was certainly an experiment. The cash machine in Reading in 1979 was quite a new thing: it was not just that I personally had not used a cash machine before.

Remember that the early 1980s saw rapid introduction of the use of microprocessers generally. For instance, the County Council I went to work for in 1980 was just evaluating the first two word processors it had bought in the whole county council (one of the largest then employing 55,000 people). The first Sinclair home computers (which were naff) came out, if I remember rightly, in 1981.

Answer 3

Hello.The first cash machine to be introduced in the UK was,I believe,at Barclays Bank in Enfield Town back in 1966 near where I used to live. So that would mean ATMs have been around 41 years!

Answer 4

As AlanL says 1st in Enfield Town 1966.I`m sure this was the first in the world not just the UK