Forget shopping on your home computer or surfing the Internet for holiday ideas, the future of electronic entertainment could lie with the humble cashpoint machine.

That at least is the demand from the British public who, according to a survey from a leading cashpoint manufacturer, want the familiar "hole-in-the-wall" to provide a much wider range of services including cinema tickets and holiday booking.

The research found that almost three quarters of the British public would like to be able to buy cinema, sports or airline tickets from their cashpoint, or automated teller machine (ATM) as the manufacturers call them.

The survey was carried out on behalf of NCR the computer company which makes 80 per cent of Britain's cashpoint machines.

More than 1,000 people were polled by Harris Research for the survey. Many of those polled suggested unexpected services which they would like to receive from their cashpoint such as reminders to keep appointments and buying travel passes.

Mr Simon Rubin, head of self-service at NCR UK, said such ideas were far from fantasy.

"This is real and is already happening, not yet in the UK but certainly elsewhere. For example six billion stamps are sold every year in the US from ATMs," he said.

In Canada one bank is also selling cinema tickets through its cashpoints.

But the survey also revealed there is one part of the cash-point experience that Britons are not keen on, PIN numbers.

Just more than half the survey sample said they would be happy to forget their PIN number forever and replace it with more "futuristic" methods of identification.

The findings suggest that many ATM users are keen to enter a science fiction future in which card-users are identified by finger prints or even eye scans.

NCR has already begun testing systems which "read" the unique pattern on each individual iris.

Mr Rubin admitted that he was surprised that the survey had found so many members of the public who were happy to accept such technology.