Barclays reverses decision on post office cash withdrawals

The Post Office allows customers of 28 banks to withdraw cash, pay cash in, check their balance and deposit cheques.

Barclays had announced earlier this month that its customers would no longer be able to withdraw cash from their accounts at post offices from January 2020. 

But the bank now says it will maintain its services at post offices, including cash withdrawals, for at least the next three years, after listening to feedback from customers and consumer organisations.

Other services such as depositing cash and cheques and checking balances were already set to continue.

See our Little-known ways to bank at the post office blog for more information. 

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Which banks let their customers use Post Office branches?

Last year, the Post Office – which has 11,500 branches – handled more than 130 million transactions on behalf of UK banks. You can use its branch finder tool to find your nearest. The banks that let customers use Post Office branches are:

• Allied Irish Banks

• Bank of Ireland

• Bank of Scotland

• Barclays

• CAF Bank

• Cahoot

• Clydesdale Bank

• Co-op Bank

• Danske Bank

• First Direct

• First Trust Bank

• Halifax

• Handelsbanken

• HSBC UK

• Lloyds Bank

• Metro Bank

• Nationwide Building Society

• NatWest

• Omnio

• Payment Cloud Technologies

• Royal Bank of Scotland

• Santander

• Smile

• Starling Bank

• TSB

• Ulster Bank

• Virgin Money

• Yorkshire Bank

What does Barclays say?

Jes Staley, chief executive of Barclays Group, said the bank had announced measures to make sure vulnerable customers would have access to cash even without being able to withdraw from post offices – but said it had listened to "a great deal of public and private debate" over its decision, including from Government ministers, charities and consumer organisations.

He said: "Ultimately we have been persuaded to rethink our proposals by the argument that our full participation in the Post Office banking framework is crucial at this point to the viability of the Post Office network.

"Whilst we have concerns regarding the sustainability of relying on this model in the longer term, and want to work with Government and others to address the problems inherent in it, we recognise that the Post Office is a network valued by many communities in the UK today.

"So we have amended our position, and will now maintain a full service proposition in the Post Office for our customers, including cash withdrawals using a debit card, for the next three years."