Talking ATM - Talking ATMs in The UK

Talking ATMs in The UK

Barclays is the only major high street bank in the UK to have deployed Talking ATMs at scale. Over 80% of their 4,100 their ATMs now offer the functionality. This includes the 800 ATMs at ASDA superstores which are operated by Barclays. In addition, Northern Bank in the UK have deployed 85 talking cash machines out of their estate of over 200 which amounts to 40 per cent of their estate. Most recent machines installed by banks include a standard audio jack for blind persons to interact with the machine, but these facilities have not yet been enabled.

In 2011 the UK's leading charity for blind and partially sighted people, RNIB, launched a campaign to get major banks to install talking cash machines. They had also been working with LOCOG from 2009 to ensure that talking cashpoints would be provided in the Olympic Park for the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics. However, a few weeks before the Games, sponsor and sole provider Visa announced that they would only be able to install the necessary software in time on two machines.

In April 2013 RBS publicly announced as part of their 2012 Sustainability report that they would be installing Talking ATMs from 2014 onwards, as part of a wider ATM upgrade.