Update on Access to Cash in Canada

In 2023, the Bank of Canada developed a travel-based measure of cash access. This quantified how far Canadians needed to travel to their nearest Automatic Banknote Machine (ABM) or financial institution (FI) branch. This study has been updated with the latest available data, 2023, and the opportunity has been taken to improve the data quality of the ABM data provided by Mastercard, such as duplicate records, missing ABMs and issues with ABM coordinates ¹

Access to ABMs and bank branches

Between the fourth quarter of 2019 and 2023 the number of ABMs hardly changed, although the mix changed with the number of ABMs not affiliated with any FI brand, ‘white label’ ABMs, increasing. However, the number of FI branches fell by 6%.