I need a haircut. In fact, it's overdue. So, with a free weekend morning recently I headed to the barbers for a much-needed trim.

The barber in question only takes cash. This is a bit inconvenient for me as someone who rarely carries physical money - much to the disappointment of This is Money's Editor and cash champion, Lee Boyce.

My usual routine is to stop at a nearby branch of Sainsbury's where there is a cash machine and withdraw the necessary funds (now £21, hardly an ideal sum to pay in notes) before plodding down to the barber shop.

A mere two minutes out of my way at most.

In a bleary-eyed Saturday morning daze, I realised that the Sainsbury's Bank machine wouldn't accept my debit card. Strange.

Then I saw the message on the screen reading something to the tune of 'This cash machine is currently unavailable, sorry for any inconvenience'.

Fine. I wasn't that inconvenienced - there was another cash point around the corner, after all.

Imagine my confusion upon arriving at the second cash point, this time at a branch of Halifax, to see that it gave the same message as the previous one.

Unlike some places around the UK where there are now few or no  cash points, I fortunately had a wealth of machines nearby.

A quick check of my phone showed that there was thankfully a third one, this time with two machines available, just a few hundred metres away.

It couldn't go wrong again, could it? This time, I didn't even reach the machine to know that it too was out of action. As I approached, I noticed a fellow concerned citizen walking back and forth between the two machines on either side of the entrance to Santander, a disappointed look on his face.

Once again: 'This cash machine is currently unavailable, sorry for any inconvenience'.

At this point, in the pouring rain without an umbrella and the assumption that I might likely face the same story again if I detoured to a fourth bank branch, I resigned myself to another week without a fresh cut.

But what was behind this? Was it a mass outage, or had I just been unlucky? 

Link, the UK's ATM network, told This is Money: 'We have checked on the machines mentioned, and the incidents don't appear to be linked, one was out of cash, one had been vandalised and one had a fault requiring an engineer.

'Therefore, it appears just to be an unfortunate coincidence. All ATM operators have a vested interest in keeping their ATMs working, not only as a customer service but also for the income they generate, and they will have local staff to fix the ATMs or engineers on call for more serious faults.'

This is confirmed by Halifax, who said its ATM had a fault at the time, while Sainsbury's said its machine had been vandalised.

An unfortunate coincidence, perhaps. But there are plenty of things that can cause an ATM to go out of service - and if their overall number is dwindling, it can surely only mean more people like me will struggle to access cash. 

Almost 10,000 ATMs have been closed down over the past five years, and a further 23,000 are expected to be closed, leaving just 15,000 free cash machines around the country. There were 50,000 free machines five years ago. 

According to Santander, a number of ATMs being unavailable in a specific area could be the result of fraudsters attempting to install card skimming devices into certain ATMs, or deliberately damaging others in order to push customers to one they have rigged. 

Another possibility, it said, is that multiple banks used the same cash processor or delivery firm, which could cause ATMs to go down if demand exceeded expectation. It added, however, that this is relatively unlikely. 

So, it was probably just bad luck. Had I walked to a fourth cashpoint, I would likely have been able to make a withdrawal.

However, for areas that aren't serviced by such a high number of ATMs, someone looking for cash might find themselves running out of machines to use.

Not being able to take out £30 was a minor inconvenience for me, but for elderly people reliant on cash, or small businesses who conduct most of their business with physical money, this downturn could prove debilitating. 

Many companies are loathe to begin taking card payments due to the charges that payment processors such as Mastercard and Visa levy on each transaction. 

It's for this reason that many businesses which do accept cards, don't accept American Express due to that firm's higher charges. 

Sometimes, more simply, they have been taking cash for generations and are too stubborn or set in their ways to introduce card payments, but in the current cash-dwindling society they could suffer because of this.

It's also true that some businesses don't accept card because they aren't being completely honest with the taxman - but I'd like to think these are in the minority. 

The barber lost my custom on the weekend purely because they didn't accept the methods of payment that I had access to.

In 2024, I don't think it would be wrong for me, or others in similar circumstances, to consider rerouting not to yet another cash machine, but instead to a barber shop that allows card payments. 

Doing so, however, could spell the end for many of these small businesses.