Move to cardless ATMs

FIFTY years after Barclays installed the world’s first ATM in a London suburb, the British bank and several of its big US competitors are racing to digitise the old-fashioned cash machine.

The first ATM was unveiled in Enfield on June 27 1967. Now forecasts of the death of cash are making the industry rethink its proposition to meet changing consumer needs, with plastic cards increasingly being replaced by mobile payments.

“Our industry will innovate more in the next five years than in the past 50,” said Andy Mattes, CEO of Diebold Nixdorf, which makes a third of the world’s more than three million ATMs.

With increased smartphone use and Silicon Valley companies wading into the payments industry, banks and ATM makers have put interaction with mobile devices at the centre of their new machines. They hope that rather than being subsumed by mobile payments, ATMs will be able to absorb them.

Several banks in the US and in Europe are rolling out machines with near-field communication (NFC) technology, a type of electronic communication used in contactless payments. This enables customers to set up a transaction on their phone before they reach an ATM, with the machine dispensing cash when their phone comes into contact with it.

It is estimated that 2.2 billion smartphones will be equipped with NFC by 2020.

For CEO of the ATM Industry Association Mike Lee, the attractions of “cardless” ATMs are added security and the ability to speed up transactions.

“Cardless transactions take just 10 seconds for customers to get their cash, compared to around 30 seconds for traditional card withdrawals.” — TMG