Wells Fargo Bank is following the industry trend and pulling the plug on coin-sorting machines in its Minnesota branch lobbies. They will be all gone in the state within a few months, a company official said Wednesday.
“Our contract with our coin-counting service recently ended, and we anticipate that the removal of coin-counting machines will occur in Minnesota branches in the coming months,” said Wells Fargo spokesman John Hobot.
“We understand that a small group of customers use and enjoy the coin counters,” Hobot added, saying that branches are providing as an option “coin wrappers so customers can roll their change for deposit. We apologize for any inconvenience.”
The machines are being removed over time in the Twin Cities area, with one taken out recently from a Wells Fargo branch near W. Lake Street and Hennepin Avenue S. in Minneapolis. An employee there directed one customer a mile or so east to a sorter still in the branch near Lake and Nicollet Avenue.
A page on San Francisco-based Wells Fargo’s website, last updated in April 2016, said the coin-counting machines “are primarily located in Colorado and Minnesota.” The page makes no mention of the phasing out of the sorters in either state.
Spokesmen for two other banks with a major presence in Minnesota, U.S. Bank and TCF, were checking Thursday on what plans they might have afoot to reduce or eliminate the machines.
The sorters, roughly the size of a free-standing ATM, open wide and swallow coins by the jar- or can-full. They swirl the change about and kick out a receipt for cashing at the teller counter. Banks typically offer the service for free for account-holders and charge a fee to non-customers. Similar fee-based machines can be found at retail locations besides banks.
Banks around the country have been eliminating this service in recent years, either because of expense and as demand dwindles as spending cash and getting coins back is not as common as it once was. Also, customers have complained about machines shorting them.
Capital One removed the machines from all branches early last year. TD Bank did the same in May 2016.
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