Banking interfaces have moved to phones. Cash has not vanished. Households, small businesses, and public services still depend on notes. Treating ATMs as a legacy leftover is a category error: they are the remaining public interface to physical money.
Access is not evenly distributed
When machines disappear from a neighbourhood, the people who still need cash travel further. Infrastructure decisions have social consequences, not only operational ones.
Reliability is the product
A smaller, better-run network can serve people more honestly than a large neglected one. The work is to keep the machines that remain actually in service.
Digital banking did not replace cash infrastructure. It made the remaining physical layer more important to get right.