Cashless Society?

You know the scenario. You’re in a bar in Lan Kwai Fong or SoHo and suddenly you discover you’re short on cash. You ask the bartender if he’ll accept plastic for one drink and he asks if you’re talking about breasts. It’s time for a quick cash run. On stepping outside, however, you suddenly realize there’s no such thing. Your nearest bet is either Lyndhurst Terrace or Pedder Street, a cumbersome trek either way. Once you’re there, of course, the journey’s still far from over. For the longest lines on a Saturday night aren’t outside Volar or Qube, but at that other popular venue for mechanical interaction and faceless exchange: the ATM.

There’s no question we could do with more cash machines in certain areas of Hong Kong. HSBC’s recently proposed and (wisely) aborted plan to raise minimum withdrawal amounts to $300 was intended to cut down increasingly unbearable waiting times at ATM queues. Lan Kwai Fong and SoHo seem particularly glaring examples. Not only are they part of the Central district, which boasts the highest density of ATMs in the city, but they’re also areas where machines could not be more obviously in demand every night.

“It’s absurd,” says Adrian Cheng, waiting in a sluggish 10pm ATM queue along Lyndhurst on a Friday night; “in other cities you have machines everywhere, but here we don’t even have them anywhere within two of the city’s busiest spending areas.” Further down the queue, George Morrison agrees. “In other cities,” he says, “you get privately installed ATM machines in bars, coffee shops and convenience stores. Why is it so difficult to have them somewhere in the bar areas here?”

Naturally, it’s not just customers who think the two nightspots are underserved by ATMs. Jun Fermin, manager of Havana on Elgin Street, constantly encounters patrons in need of a machine nearby. “To have a machine just around Elgin Street somewhere would greatly benefit the whole of SoHo,” he says. “When tourists ask us where a machine is, we have to tell them to go all the way to Queen’s Road, because it’s the only one around that’s easy to explain how to get to.” Fermin also affirms that his bar, like most others, tries not to accept credit cards for any orders under $100.

So just why aren’t there any ATM machines in the vicinity? With regard to bank-owned ATM branches, an HSBC spokesperson cites “commercial” and “security” issues as the main factors preventing machines from being set up in certain locations. She also contends that “from either Lan Kwai Fong or SoHo, it’s currently only a one-minute walk to an ATM, which is better than you’ll find in most cities.”

But regarding non-bank, off-premise ATM machines as found in the bars, coffee shops and convenience stores of cities such as London and Tokyo, the issue gets murkier. “Technically, it ought to work,” says Billy Mak, an associate professor in the Department of Finance and Decision Sciences at the Baptist University. “Security-wise you would have staff monitoring the vicinity all the time, and in the case of convenience stores, CCTV as well.”