Bank cash machines were running red-hot as Islanders went on a multi-million dollar spending spree over the Cup Match holiday, The Royal Gazette can reveal.

For an estimated sum of at least $4 million was withdrawn from hole-in-the-wall machines operated by the Bank of Bermuda and the Bank of Butterfield over the holiday break.

The Bank of Bermuda churned out a massive $678,000 on the two Cup Match days alone.

Its busiest machine over Thursday and Friday was at Rural Hill Plaza in Paget, although figures for the total withdrawal were not available yesterday.

And the weekend period may have at least matched -- or exceeded -- the Cup Match figures.

The record for withdrawals from a single Bank of Butterfield machine went to the bank's Front Street ATM, which spat out $130,000 to cash-hungry Islanders over the weekend.

A spokesman for the Bank of Butterfield said a total of $2 million was taken out of ATMs across the Island from Thursday to Sunday.

The machine at the Front Street branch of the bank took the heaviest pounding.

And on Thursday and Friday, the biggest withdrawal was at the Shelly Bay MarketPlace machine, with a total of $40,000.

But the Somerset branch -- this year's venue for the two-day cricket match -- came in a close second over the match days, but dropped down the league after that.

The spokesman said: "Activity on the machines was a lot higher in the latter part of the weekend.

"Thursday through to Saturday we only put out just shy of $0.5 million -- between Saturday and Monday, the figure was $1.5 million.'' He added: "The very high cash withdrawals later in the week indicate people might have run out and topped up their cash later on.

"Some of our machines were very heavily used from one end of the Island to the other -- there was no pattern to it, but we didn't run out of money in any of them.

"We came close with our Front Street machine, but we managed to survive although it was close.'' But he said an expected last-minute Wednesday rush on service at tellers' desks failed to materialise.

The spokesman added: "Generally, we found that we were able to handle the volume of customers in our branches on Wednesday.