NEW YORK – With more options for depositing and transferring funds, as well as increasing use of plastic and mobile payments, the days of the standard automated teller machine could be numbered – if banks don’t continue to innovate.

CNBC writes that banks have been “carefully tweaking” the retail banking experience to keep account holders happy.

Although activity is tough to measureATMS –  whose basic purpose is to withdraw cash – have become places where customers can also make deposits, transfer funds and pay bills. However, usage is declining about 2% each year, Mike Moebs of consulting firm Moebs Services told CNBC.

Meanwhile, the volume of cash dispensed from ATMs has remained largely unchanged over the years, Brian Bailey, vice president of strategy and branch transformation at NCR Corporation, told CNBC. "Consumers still use cash on a regular basis," he said. And the desire to use cash isn’t declining, according to a Federal Reserve Bank of Boston study, as it’s still the preferred method of payment for purchases under $20.

For smaller purchases, one of the more significant changes to ATMs in recent years is the ability to dispense lower denominations, such as ones, fives and tens. More than 150 banks have also launched “video teller” technology, according to NCR, and JPMorgan Chase is experimenting with iris and palm scanners to identify customers at ATMs.

The good news is that cash isn’t going anywhere, but the Fed Bank of Boston study did find that higher-ticket transactions are more likely to go the way of a credit card or another form of technology, such as mobile or PayPal. “That's part of the reason banks are racing to equip ATMs with more tools, in fear of the day when digital and mobile banking takes away the need for the ATM (and potentially denting the millions in fees banks get from customers using out-of-network ATMs),” writes CNBC.

In convenience stores, ATMs are a huge customer draw. A 2014 Federal Reserve System report found that “cash is still the most used retail payment instrument, with 40% — the single largest share — of all consumer transaction activity involving cash,” said Nicholas Pappathopoulos, director of public relations for Cardtronics Inc., in the December 2014 NACS Magazine article, “One-Stop Shopping.”

Sherif Khan, manager of a 7-Eleven in Fairfax, Virginia, added that most of the time, ATM customers will make an additional purchase inside the store. Recent ATM upgrades offer customers more financial options, such as moneygrams. “It’s basically the same machine with more financial transactions,” he said. “More people come in to use an ATM that can do more things.”