If you have looked for somewhere to get cash out recently, you might have noticed a change – many bank-owned ATMs have vanished.
Susan Edmunds of RNZ
Sometimes they have been replaced with non-bank options, which can cost $2.50 per withdrawal, and sometimes they have been removed completely.
The country's largest bank, ANZ, said it has reduced its ATM numbers by 85 in the past two years. In all but 10 cases, the contract for the site was given to another provider.
Westpac said its number had dropped by 54 over the same period.
The Reserve Bank said the number of bank branches around the country was down by 40% and the number of bank-owned ATMs had dropped 32% over the past decade. Between 2012 and 2017, total ATM numbers fell by 14.7% per million people.
Consumer NZ said it was concerned.
"While cash use is declining, it is still used by many people. The Reserve Bank's latest cash-use data, from September 2025, found that 40.3% of people said they used cash for everyday things and only 2.5% said they never use cash."
New Zealand Banking Association chief executive Roger Beaumont said banks were responding to customer demand.
"The main reason there are fewer ATMs is that fewer customers are using them. Around 1.5% of all customer transactions are made at an ATM, and that's slowly reducing every year.
"In some cases, landlords making changes to tenancy agreements, or seismic risk, may lead to banks removing or relocating ATMs."
Claire Matthews - a banking expert at Massey University - said there was a cost associated with ATMs and a risk due to the cash being held. There had to be enough use being made of them to make them worthwhile for banks, she said.
"People use less cash and are more likely to get cash with eftpos transactions if they do want it, so there is less use of cash. I'm struggling to remember when I used an ATM."
University of Auckland senior lecturer in economics Chanelle Duley said the drop in ATM numbers was part of a broader "retreat" from physical banking infrastructure.
Fincap, the financial mentor network, said cash was important for many of the people mentors dealt with. Some people used cash to help them budget.
It said that it had heard from mentors in urban and rural areas that some people found it hard to access cash.
"In rural areas the cost of significant travel to access cash can compound financial hardship. In urban areas, we have heard concerns around hardship or exclusion for clients who have a disability and/or, limited time amongst their other obligations to queue or travel for the limited local available services which do not charge for cash withdrawal."
It is something that the Reserve Bank has its eye on.
It has been consulting on plans to propose minimum standards for cash services in New Zealand and will release its findings late next month.
Its proposal was to put a floor under the number and location of places where bank customers could withdraw, deposit or swap cash.
It wants 95% of people living in urban areas to have walking-distance access to a free cash point.
It said meeting the standard would cost banks about $100 million a year, but that was only 1% of their combined annual profit.
A spokesperson said it was analysing the 6000 submissions it had received and was not in a position to comment further at this stage.
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