An article relating to this blog post on Finextra:
Nationwide bids to beat branch queues by stopping small value cash withdrawals
The UK's Nationwide Building Society is to ban small value cash withdrawals at its branch counters in an effort to reduce queuing times and move more routine transactions to the ATM.
See article
Brilliant initiative from Nationwide, to restrict peoples' in-branch access to their own cash. It ignores those who don't want to draw £100 or more out and don't trust cash machines (like many elderly); nor does it help those who want coins for some or
all of their withdrawal. I know a number of people who have kids at school age, and they need to withdraw coins to pay bus fares, lunch etc. None of them draw out as much as £100 in one go. Luckily, none of them bank with Nationwide... Likewise, those
who go into branches to withdraw because they want £5 notes, which are pretty hard to get hold of through an ATM these days.
Anyway, there's an easy way round this - which will make the queues longer. If you want £50, simply go in, draw out £100 and immediately pay £50 back in. Doubles the length of time you are in the queue, but you still get the £50 over the counter you wanted.
If people did that, how long before they reversed the policy?
Maybe they just need more cashiers. It's called customer service...