The National Bank of Poland has published data on the Polish payment card market. Over the last few days, you have read on cashless.pl about, amongst other things, the number and value of transactions and the number of payment terminals. Today, however, I’d like to draw your attention to ATMs. The NBP’s data shows that, in terms of the number of these machines, we are back to 2014 levels.

See also: PZU acquires the leader of the Ukrainian life insurance market: MetLife Ukraina

The latest statistics from the central bank show that, as of the end of December 2025, there were 20,409 ATMs on the Polish market – 79 fewer than in the previous quarter, but already over 330 fewer than in December 2024. The number of machines has been falling intermittently for some time, meaning it has quietly returned to 2014 levels. The last time the Polish market had as few ATMs as at the end of last year was in Q4 2014. Furthermore, data from cashless.pl shows that the ATM network continued to shrink at the start of this year.

There are probably several reasons for this phenomenon. It seems to me that the most significant of these is the reduction in the number of bank branches, as the ATMs previously located at these outlets are also being removed as the branches close. The second reason is the way ATM operators are remunerated for settled transactions, which leads to the removal of machines in less attractive locations. This factor was somewhat mitigated in Q1 by decisions taken by payment organizations. It will be interesting to see how this translates into the number of machines in the longer term.

See also: Erste's website in Poland is now up and running. See what's changed

As for the number of cash-in machines, it is constantly growing. In December 2025, there were 12,600 of them – almost 200 more than in September 2025. Data from the National Bank of Poland also shows that the number of cash withdrawals, which stood at 107.8 million in the fourth quarter of last year, fell compared with both the third quarter of 2025 (115.2 million) and the fourth quarter of 2024 (113.4 million). The value of withdrawals amounted to PLN 109.1 billion. This is less than in Q3 2025 (PLN 113.3 billion), but more than in Q4 2024 (PLN 104.9 billion). By contrast, the number of cash deposits fell to 25 million from 27.6 million a quarter earlier and 26.1 million a year earlier. The value reached PLN 60.9 billion. By comparison, a quarter earlier, it was PLN 69.1 billion, and a year earlier, PLN 64.2 billion.