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History of the Automatic Teller
XopherMV writes "The line was long and slow, and he became increasingly irritated as his lunch hour dribbled away. All at once, he had a flash of inspiration. 'Golly, all the teller does is cash checks, take deposits, answer questions like "What's my balance?" and transfer money between accounts,' recalls Wetzel, now 75 and still living in Dallas with his wife. 'Wow, I think we could build a machine that could do that!' And with a $4 million go-ahead from Docutel's parent company, that's exactly what he and his engineers did. Read more about the story of the ATM."
What is the history of the first post?
There is even one, for some reason, at the McMurdo Station on Antarctica.
I would hate to be the armored truck driver responsible for keeping that one filled.
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
I'd actually prefer it if these banks hired more tellers (and stopped them going on lunch at the same time as I do)...
That wasn't the old Gold Club, was it?
that I can get a transaction receipt from a Diebold ATM, but not from a Diebolt voting machine.
Just submit a story with an incredibly tedious subject and containing almost no technical information at all.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Je n'ai pas d'avenir Je n'ai qu'un destin Celui de n'être qu'un souvenir C'est pour demain
Think of all the people that invention has helped out in a bind...
Politicians when they need money for their hookers, no more personal checks.
When all those dirty old men run out of money at the strip club they can hit the atm
And, me when I need bar money late at night (I won't take a credit card cause then there goes the bank)
Evolution or ID?
Actor. Actor. Actor. Actor. Actor. Actor. Actor. Jock. Actor. Actor. Jock. Actor. Actor. Jock.
I've heard they have a busniessman once in a while, but only the billionaire figurehead type.
Think they'd ever do a biography of the guy who invented one of best convenience devices ever created? No. I guess that's boring compared to Dubiously-Talented-Generic-Actress-Bint fretting over how hard it is to find a good sitter for her children's cat as they go on vacation to the South of France.
And people wonder why I'm a misanthrope.
--- Ban humanity.
ATM's are certainly great for when you need quick access to cash, particularly when you're travelling abroad, but an even better development has been the debit card. I find that I hardly ever carry cash anymore, as the debit card is not only convenient (no change jingling in your pocket), but also makes tracking much easier if you use something like Quicken or Money.
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
It's a fantastic invention, indeed...
But it'll be much, much cooler when I can snag $10 or $15 or $75 out of the machine. Why do we get only 20s?
Sony ha
...we're willing to pay for those quickie stops at the ATM with often usurious fees--usually about $1.50 each time..."
Those fees drive me nuts. When I was in college, using the ATM would add $2.50 surcharge. When I studied abroad in Japan, there was a single ATM that I could use in all of Nagoya. The downtown Citibank had an ATM that would only charge me $1.00 for every transaction. That's right - it cost me $2.50 to use a machine just a mile from my bank, but only $1.00 to use a machine on the other side of the frickin' world.
coughcoughscamcoughcough
Now I use a credit union and only use credit union ATMs. No fees.
After the technology had earned the trust of once highly skeptical customers, an amazing transformation began to take place: Face-to-face business became face-to-interface, and it changed the way people consumed.
Ironically, the same thing happened with sex around the same time.
How ironic, that a site that complains about (mainly American) tech workers losing their jobs to Indians gives favourable coverage to an inventor who made thousands of bank workers lose their jobs to a machine....
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
From the article:
The success of the ATM inspired similar innovations (some more frustrating than others) in a number of nonfinancial industries as well. Full-service gas stations have all but given way to credit card-primed gas pumps. Delta Air Lines has 846 do-it-yourself check-in terminals in 83 U.S. cities. Kroger has self-check-out lanes in more than 1,400 supermarkets. And you can find similar aisles in 850 Home Depot stores.
Pay-at-the-pump stations are so convenient I will not use a traditional pay-inside gas pump unless absolutely necessary, even if it means going a bit out of my way. The self-service check-in option at the airport is a $DEITYsend, too: not checking any bags? Why muck around behind people who have never before seen the inside of an airport? Identify yourself to the kiosk with a credit card or frequent flyer card, get the boarding pass and go.
I find the self-serve lanes at store rather less useful, but am amazed at how quickly the ATM model has become both widespread and nearly indispensable.
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
In the (relatively) early days of ATMs a couple of crooks bought a machine, built a nice-looking case around it, and rolled it into a shopping mall. They programmed it to report that "your transaction could not be completed--please try again later." Of course, it wasn't connected to anything--except a recorder that was logging all the ATM card numbers and the customer-entered PINs. The crooks came back, rolled away the ATM, and drained the bank accounts of the poor folks who tried to use the machine.
Uh, no kidding? Guess what -- tellers cost them money too!
Obviously, banks make their money on 1) lending out deposits and 2) account fees. Everything else is just designed to get money into the vault, and ATMs are a vastly cheaper way of supporting customers than branches and tellers.
Actually, it's probably just lending out deposited money that's their real business. My impression is that the account fees function more to weed out unprofitable customers than to make money in their own right.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
It takes a machine of far less complexity to issue on $20.00 increments. It also reduces the chances for human error, like loading tens in the twenties slot. That of course could be overcome with a machine capable of reading the bills it dispenses, but your back to that "complexity" thing.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
A tip for /. readers driving in the UK: only stop at Moto service stations when using the motorway network. They use free ATMs; most of the others have signed up with the fee-charging vampires.
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
From the article:
What you might find truly surprising, however, is that as a rule, large banks actually lose money on these moneymakers
Oh, poor banks! They have to pay for cash machines and they don't profit from them!
The banks have to have cash machines, if they didn't then they would lose lots of customers to the banks that did have them.
So, if they are charging customers from other banks, that money is profit, since they would have to have the machines for their existing customers anyway.
Without crediting Edward Teller as the first automatic teller. All the teller does is look for reds to out, answer questions like "Should we build a hydrogen bomb?" and transfer energy between fused hydrogen atoms
Once again, we never get to hear the other side.
Damned liberal media...
I was referring to the most infamous of them all. The infamous el goldclubo. Where there was a plethora of asses.
Here in the middle of the Netherlands, ATM and their bastard offspring have become an issue. Oh, they work nicely enough, do what they are supposed to do and of course we got the random bulgarian fuckwits who attach magnetic card readers, so our ATMs work just like any other ATM. The problem is the fact that banks use ATMs as a cheap means to close down local establishments. Instead of talking to a human person, banks now give us two ATMs to withdraw money, another specialized ATM-like thingy to deposit money and a big sticker with an URL on it to their online banking site. ( Which, if I may add, works perfectly with Mozilla. Go ABN-Amro! *ahem* )
For daily stuff this isn't much of an issue and the town where I live in is considered large enough ( 100k+ ) for banks to have permanent establishments, but what about smaller towns? Because this is the middle of nowhere, there are plenty of towns without bank establishments, where it was cheaper for the bank to put an ATM or two in place, promote online banking and telling people to go fuck themselves. Even though for daily use ATM suffice, how about non-daily things? Stuff like opening new accounts, information, major transactions*, mortages and supplemental financial services?
Mind you, this is the Netherlands. Almost no one here has creditcards and instead most of us pay directly from our bank accounts using our bank's card with our PIN. Think of it as an ATM which pays your purchases, comparable to a debit card.
* ) This means anything about EUR 1500 because of the default limit of EUR 1500 max withdrawal per day. Basically, we've got three options if we want to buy something EUR 1500+; use the ATM once a day for several days, raise the limit at a bank establishment and withdraw money at said bank establishment. ( Limits dont apply for non-ATM withdrawals ) Of course, since most establishments have been closed and allot of people around here live in the middle of nowhere, options 2 and 3 aren't really valid unless you want to travel 25km in the hope of finding a local bank establishment. Try paying for a EUR 20k car that way.
Hate me!
Oh no... an entire article with thousands of threads dedicated to calling them ATM Machines. My nitpikc nerves are ready and waiting to have their seizure.
"The line was long and slow, and he became increasingly irritated as his lunch hour dribbled away."
So now, instead of waiting on a teller, we wait in a long line of people trying to get to the ATM with the person at the front repeatedly putting in his card while all the time muttering under his breath "I'm sure I had money in here!"
This is me. Don't like it? That's unlucky.
Sorry, this is going to come across a bit sexist, but it's an observation of mine that I think is true.
When women use cashpoints, they will often get out tiny amounts of money. Like, ten or twenty pounds. When men use them, they get out much bigger quantities, so they don't have to visit them so often.
I've had girlfriends that have driven me nuts getting out ten pounds, and then a few hours later having to hunt for a cashpoint so they can do it again.
Is this a valid observation or am I just a sexist?
Why is the hero of this story the chap in Dallas and not the guy in Enfield? Although his invention didn't have all the functionality of the moden machines it also allowed access to cash 24 hours a day, rather like cashing a cheque.
Would it be outrageous to supose that this spin might be because the inventor of the machine in Enfield was not American? Not that I would suggest Americans ever revise history...
The ATM clearly fell short of expectations in one area, though. It never reduced the number of tellers or filled the demand for bank branches--something the machine's pioneers had promised. According to the FDIC's count, there are close to 75,000 branches today, up from under 58,000 in 1985. Tellers number 539,000, vs. the 484,000 in 1985.
Not to mention the technical infrastructure required to service and maintain these machines and their network...
Durrrr!
I don't believe that. One mechanism drops the bills, another hands them out to you (hence the fact that you can't reach in the slot and grab some out of the stack). So add another hopper that has 5s, not a huge deal. Then use the same "handout mechanism".
It can be done, have you never seen a bill-changing machine?
Sony ha
though many of them now also function as retailers, cross-selling IRAs and mortgages to customers who come in with a big deposit. And that is something human beings still do better than any machine. For now.
To paraphrase a line from The Boondock Saints, That's just fuckin' scary. Automatic Retailer Machines. Man, i am not looking forward to a robot selling me a computer. It's like Uncle Tom with LED's... creepy movie idea, huh.
anyway.
So the bank "loses" $250/month on its own ATM. An entry-level teller making $10/hour will cost the bank over $1600/month in salary alone. If the bank didn't have an ATM in the doorway, the bank would need more tellers to handle the same volume of transactions. The bank should pay me for my ATM transactions for lowering their cost structure. (Instead they cut the number of free teller-assisted transactions to encourage you to go the machine.)
Umm.. again, that means that low-paid public-facing staff have lost their jobs and better-paid technicians have been hired. This does not disprove my point !
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
'Wow, I think we could build a machine that could do that!' And with a $4 million go-ahead from Docutel's parent company, that's exactly what he and his engineers did.
Imagine that!
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
That's one good thing about the UK's system. You can use any machine belonging to any bank without paying any fees at all. There are a few machines in local shops and petrol stations and so on that charge money for cash but I can't imagine anyone actually uses them :(
Umm.. again, that means that low-paid public-facing staff have lost their jobs and better-paid technicians have been hired. This does not disprove my point !
Well, you might have a personal bone to pick with this ATM thing, but suffice it to say that you need to have posessed something in order to lose it. The best we can extrapolate from the article is, again, that tellers were hired at a slower rate than before -- not that anyone "lost their jobs".
Sony ha
In the UK, ATMs that are part of the Link network are generally free to all participating banks. So, even though I'm a HSBC user, I can use HSBC, Natwest, Lloyds TSB, Halifax etc. ATMs for free. The only time you ever really need to pay to use ATMs is for the private ones in clubs and bars and for building societies.
I'm sick and tired of drive-through service. As Joe Pesci put it, "they always screw you in the drive through." And oh hell if you piss them off -- time to eat a snot-burger. It's time to automate drive-through service. Surely, voicecom is far-enough along and/or they can make a push-button system just like an ATM. All the employees would need to do then is keep bin-trails filled with correct burger, fries, whathaveyou. The drinks would be an issue, but if nothing else, remove the need to explain to the human what you want to eat and the exchange of money. Of course, this would end stuff like I used to do when I was 16, ordering $4 worth of food and then putting on an act of, "oh, all I have is a $1.50...." They'd take the buck fiddy and give me all the food anyhow....
"All great things are simple & expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Churchill
Since we're on the topic, I always wonder why thieves don't just drive a truck up to an ATM in some remote location, jack it on their truck, take it home and pull it appart? Surely 20min and 3 somewhat handy guys with some basic tools could pry one of these things off the ground? Can anyone offer some insight? Certainly seems easier than robbing a bank.
The Digital Couture Collection
funnily enough, that was exactly the same story that came to my mind. You would have though they would have got more than $3000 though
over here in the UK the machines tended to be built into brick walls (hence the expression "i'm just getting some cash from the hole in the wall")
this has led to enterprising thieves using a JCB to steal the whole damn thing netting a cool $140,000.
just goes to show, that like so much in life, the real money isn't in making something, it's in stealing someone elses.
Rachel, doing a crossword: "Heating device?" Phoebe: "Radiator" Rachel: "Five letters" Phoebe: "Rdetr"
"The dew has clearly fallen with a particularly sickening thud this morning"
take deposits ... 'Wow, I think we could build a machine that could do that!'
Wow, you can make *deposits* at those things???
I'm quizzical about the $250 loss figure reported in the article. Is that the cost, or the loss? If it costs $250/month to run an ATM, I'd like the bank to find a human teller who works 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, for $250 a month. If the ATM costs $250/month more than a human teller's salary, consider that a teller is operating 160 hours a month vs. an atm operating $744. Either way the ATM is saving the bank money. The $250/month figure to me just seems like their excuse to keep the $2 service fees.
"Give away the stone, let the oceans take and transmutate this cold and faded anchor." - Maynard James Keenan
I don't mind ATMs but one thing that does bug me is the progression to self-scan lanes in stores. It looks like a poor excuse to dump cashiers, and the systems are slower too. Four self-scan lanes seem to barely keep up with two cashiers, and still require intervention and supervision by at least one person. It seems like an effort to skimp on minimum wage work backfired, but still, I try to avoid going to stores that try to squeeze out another job by replacing it with bad service and an insulting and tedious self-scan system.
There was an ATM in the student union when I was in college (early 80s) that was a freestanding model. For whatever reason, the telecomm line and the modem were both exposed.
The naive idea we had was to monitor the line and then perform a man-in-the-middle attack and continuously withdraw money, the idea being that we would spoof the machine into thinking we had more money in our accounts than we did.
It was dumb for a number of reasons -- using our own bank cards, assuming it was a 'normal' 1200 baud modem, assuming the transaction wasn't encrypted, etc.
But could it have worked even if we had more of the technical details worked out? Given the state of technology in the early 80s, how likely was it they were running the comm links unencrypted? I'd assume now that the whole communications session is encrypted with long keys and that the individual transactions are signed or checksummed as well as time/date stamped to prevent this kind of thing.
I used to like Debit Cards too; and then I tried to bring up a case of fraud to my bank. The jerks stone-walled me and sat on their fat asses. It was actually the WEB SITE that said "Yeah, you don't live in khazakstan. This is Fraud. We'll be giving you a credit. Have a nice day."
;)
The bank then "refused" my fraud report saying "oh, you got your money back." Assholes.
Use a credit card; especially one with frequent flyer miles.
I don't carry cash anymore; I use my credit card. And I get double miles at certain restaurants. And I get free trips to Hawaii. (next stop: Tahiti)
Credit Cards are easy to trace too; you get that printed statement and a many companies will let you see your account online (don't use Internet Exploder, though!
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
Money Extra Article
APACS History Article
Sigs. We don't need no steenking sigs.
Not only do they not charge you a fee for using other ATMs, they will actaully refund other ATM fees! All I have to do is send in a copy of my statement with each of the atm charges highlighted.
Where we can read about the wonderful ATM machine written about in the HTML language!
The article does of course beg the question of whether or not alot of virii can be placed on these boxen.
-The Great AC
The sex in "The Story of O" was WAY hotter.
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I'M from Rockville Centre... cool. And that was just a couple of years after I was born. I've even done business at the Chemical Bank. Hey, I'M FAMOUS!!!
Haven't been there in ten years, but hey, it was nice when I lived there.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
On a related note, the banks here in Finland started phasing out ATMs some 5 years ago. Slowly, but surely, getting rid of the cash dispensing ones, but keeping the ones used for paying bills and doing other similar account-to-account transactions.
This push started with 'recommending' automated phone services some 15 years ago, by adding a small charge to real-life interactions.
In the last five years (or a bit more) they've been using similar added-charge tactics to move people over to web services, which admittedly have been quite good for almost a decade.
Cash is being used less and less here, and due mainly to 25 years of debit cards and early adoption of online services, Finland has the least cash circulating around in Europe.
With the disappearance of ATMs and ease of debit card handling by even small businesses, cash might soon disappear altogether.
J
Here in the Netherlands we do have some banks that gives out other notes than 20 euro bills.
They do it in this way.
If I get 90 euros I get 1x50 1x20 1x10 and 2x5 witch is perfect since you might have problems breaking large bills. Some other banks of course tries to give as few bills as possible.
For instance the ABN AMRO have removed the cash dealing by humans and have an ATM that does both withdrawls and deposits. This also reduces the risk of a robbery. However the main office still does human cash management.
Self-scan is nice if you only have a few things, but in any case, the systems now will need to improve. They should stop talking to me, because nothing is more confusing than having directions barked at me by a stupid machine that has no clue what I'm doing. And although it must have seemed like a good idea, it's time to abandon the nonsense with the scale that weighs your stuff to make sure you're not trying to steal anything -- it doesn't work well and adds a tremendous amount of confusion.
One of them involved the two rival implementations, both with fairly large followings of engineers: there first one involved the card contained a unique ID that was keyed to a central database, requiring every ATM to be connected to the database in order to authorise connections. This is the one we use today.
The second one involved having all the necessary information, such as the account balance, stored directly on the card. This meant that an ATM could authorise a transaction instantly without needing to communicate with the base. This was popular because it was faster, cheaper, much simpler, and allowed all kinds of nice features like mobile ATMs.
Apparently there were quite a lot of engineers and other managers who didn't understand why having all this information on the card was a bad idea...
So, if you ever use an ATM in the UK, remember my Uncle Ron, who managed to persuade the people in charge that the more expensive, more complex system was in fact the right way to go!
I disagree - in certain sitautions, selfscan is a godsend. Not necessarily at grocery stores - high volume purchases are ususally handled faster by the more experienced cashiers. But at Wallmart/HomeDepot/BestBuy, if I just need to buy a small handful of items, the benefit of faster access to an open register outweighs my disadvantage in raw scanning output.
Just because you're right, its still kinda wrong ;)
But yes- my wife says "Just get out 40", knowing full well that she'll be taking 35... leaving me for the week with, 5? Yeah, thanks for looking out honey. I simply ignore her and grab 100.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
The magic of ATMs became clear to me when, after three years living as a volunteer in a Chaddian village, I put my bankcard into a machine in the Paris airport and within a couple of seconds I had the computer saying my name: "Bienvenue First Last". In contrast to finding moneychangers in the back alleys of crowded markets, this was truely amazing.
It was then that I realized how ATMs contributed to the easy flow of money which is making globalization a reality.
So, even though I'm a HSBC user, I can use HSBC, Natwest, Lloyds TSB, Halifax etc. ATMs for free.
Sadly, it doesn't work inside the banks themselves, with the non-automatic teller non-machines.
I do like to keep them on their toes, and keep their brains from atrophying, which is why I always inadvertently present them with nice little puzzles to keep the brain cells ticking over. Like the time I tried paying stuff into my Natwest account in an HSBC bank. Or the time I had a cheque with just the amount in words written in the 'payable to' line. Or when I tried using someone else's credit card to pay a cheque into my own Nationwide account...
Fortunately, it's just paying stuff in where I've made an arse of it. The cashiers tend to treat me with affectionate pity, rather than as a criminal.
I'm the world's most incompetent bank customer, and ATMs are just wasted on me!
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
My favourite ATM is a local drive-thru in Connecticut. It has keys marked in braille.
This is second hand, but I believe the source. He worked with a company designing some of the first ATMs (not sure which). One day, there was a big demo, with lots of press, etc. on hand to see the new machine in action. As Murphy's Law would have it, the ATM quit working that morning. But the show must go on, so they crammed an engineer in the thing and had him shove bills through on cue.
Interesting, I was just explaining to my gf last night, how ATMs work, and how scams work. CSI's episode, involved a guy placing a fake card reader in front of the ATM's real card reader, and a camera to capture the PIN number they enter.
Not to mention, I work for a bank's data processing center, who also controls their own network of ATMs.
I know most of you are going to be thinking of how wacky Diebold is, and their corner on the market; but here is something for you to consider. Iowa, by law, all their ATMs must be on one ATM network. Think about what that kind of law could do for your business.
YOU'RE WINNER !
Another lame blog
Years ago, I worked for a company that serviced ATM's. We did service for Docutel, Mosler, and a couple of others. Part of my job was handling the software bug reports, passing them back to the proper companies. The ones for the ATM's were always the most interesting.
In the late 70's, for example, one of the vendors had to supply a patch for ATM's installed in Illinois because customers could use an ATM at any bank branch. It seems that Illinois had a law at the time that only allowed customers to bank at the office where they had their account! Sort of defeats the whole idea.
There were numerous instances of bugs where the machine would seem to capture a card for one reason or another, but then spit it out to the next customer.
The trickiest part of the ATM mechanism was the bill dispenser. It had all kinds of sensors to make sure one and ONLY one bill was passed through at a time. For gross adjustments, they used fake money that was the right size, but regular paper. For the final adjustments, they kept several hundred dollars in real $10 and $20 bills in a big safe on the premises. The money had to be replaced every few days. The early machines couldn't handle old, wrinkled cash.
One of the things I did learn was that the security was pretty good, but only as good as we made it. We used to have card programming machines laying around our warehouse. They had locks and keys, but of course the keys were always in the locks.
One thing this article didn't mention was a precursor to the ATM. Way way back in the late 60s or early 70s, the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce in Yorkdale Mall, North York, had a machine that if you put in a card and (I think) a PIN, it would dispense a sealed envelope with $30 in it and return your card. No more, no less. If you wanted $60, you had to do the process twice. But back then, $30 was a lot of money.
One thing I miss about the IBM ATMs that only had a single line of text was that if you withdrew cash, they required you to take your card out before they'd give you the cash. Harder to forget to take your card than the current colour monitor ones that will happily give you your money and then wait for your next transaction.
The next Cmdr Taco duplicate will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
The article says:
"What you might find truly surprising, however, is that as a rule, large banks actually lose money on these moneymakers--at a rate of about $250 a month per machine. They are, ironically, loss leaders, since banks don't generally charge their own customers if they use the banks' machines."
If that's the case, then are human tellers also considered loss leaders? I'm sure a human teller costs more than $250 a month.
I would hope they've finally recognized the problem and fixed it now, but I haven't checked recently. Actually I would be very surprised if at some point this wasn't discovered by not-so-friendly people, forcing them to address the issue, but this would be the kind of suppressed stuff you wouldn't find in their press releases.
Of course Safeway got bought out so the system may not of helped.
Ian
The ORIGINAL Citibank system predated the actual ATM's by a couple of years. In 1974, you got a card called a "Citicard", which was pretty much the same as a modern ATM card. Each branch had a set of little card-reading keypad devices, and you could get your account balance from them. After the novelty wore off, you realized pretty quickly that they were just about useless. It was a marketing trial balloon that eventually led to the stuff described in the article.
Oddly, as the article states, Citibank lost the edge on this technology in the following years, keeping their network private while everyone else was setting up inter-bank networks.
You're slightly confused. There is the Link network, but individual banks also have interlink agreements. So myself as a Natwest customer can use Natwest, HSBC, Lloyds TSB, Royal Bank of Scotland and a few others banks' cash machines (ATMs) but it will still cost me around £1.50 to use any machine which is solely on the Link network. Some customers of different banks don't get charged for Link transactions but might not be able to use another banks ATM at all, for example.
The only time you ever really need to pay to use ATMs is for the private ones in clubs and bars and for building societies.
Or the small Link machines you see in SPARs and other small shops. I regularly end up having to use my local machine at a charge of £1.50 because I keep forgetting to take out some cash while I'm at work (Near a whole bunch of free-to-use machines) and then find myself a couple of miles from the nearest Natwest machine. D'oh!
While waiting for the machine to act, I read the receipts most leave behind. I'm amazed at people who withdraw just $20 or $40, and incur the $3 non-=bank withdrawal charges. I am also amazed at the large fraction who have less than $100 in their accounts.
I long ago learned to choose the line with the fewest females in it in order to get done the fastest. The majority of females will write checks or use a card for purchases, even for a $2 item, while the majority of guys will pull out the green stuff.
ATMs and Internet Banking are incredibly convienient. However the price of ATMs and Internet Banking being available 24hrs/day is that the traditional banking services are going away. Banks use the ATMs as cheap tellers, and to do anything that requires a teller (cashier's check, cashing a check, whatever) is starting to incure a fee. Even calling the bank's 1-800 number and talking to a live person could ding your account with a charge. The article says that each ATM averages losing about 280 a month and they say that they are willing to lose this money in order to keep customers. But really it is so they can hire less tellers, have less branches open and charge fees for anything other than depositing or withdrawing money. ATMs are very great, but they are not free.
You know South Africa has a pretty good banking system and they caught onto ATM's pretty quick. The first ATM i remember going to must have been around 1980-2. The first ones actually did give you the option of selecting how you wanted your cash (i.e 5 20's or 10 10's etc..) Pretty cool. But they don't do that anymore. I guess people get confused or are too much in a rush or the banks find it easier to just stock 1 denomination.
Ian
In Canada they have always been called ABMs (Automatic Banking Machines) as they are not actually tellers. Or maybe its so they don't piss of the tellers (and their unions?).
My wife used to watch the game show network (don't laugh, she can't call me a nerd anymore for watching sci-fi) and one time they brought out the very first ATM machine. I was laughing hysterically, I couldn't believe it. You could do a transaction once a day and the game show host was saying, "Do you think that people will actually use this?"
I was a participant in a pivotal meeting in the history of ATMs:
- The year: 1987.
- The place: Sacramento.
- The participants: VPs from Wells Fargo, BofA, etc. -v- leading disability rights advocates.
- The issue: Are ATMs a convenience, thus accessibility optional, or a "public accommodation", thus accessibility required?
Predictably, the bank men were busy saying, "ATMs will never replace tellers, they're just an added convenience, but we'll make a few a bit lower so you folks can reach." The outgunned disabled reps were grasping at it, seemingly glad to get something/anything out of it.
During a break, I did some research in the California code (this was pre-ADA days, remember), realized the standards for telephones were applicable, and pushed the team to win one for the crippers. Thus energized, we rolled right over them. The bankers knew they were beaten, and after that day, ATMs standardized in an accessible design - including for hearing- and vision-disabled.
I think the first thing you want to do before you get a checking or savings account at a bank that offers ATM/debit cards is to find out their fraudulent use policy.
At Bank of America in California (where I bank), they're pretty good at reversing fraudulent charges against your debit card. That's why you MUST remember the toll-free number on the back of the card, because that number is your means to protect yourself in case the card gets lost or stolen.
When I was on my honeymoon (8 years ago) I ran across an ATM that dispensed coins. Tried it out by withdrawing 39.43 or something like that and it got it down to the penny.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
Don't you know that Super Models and Rock Stars are the source of ethically clean moral and political thought of our age? I mean, like when Bono says something, you know one day it'll be in a ethics or western civ textbook some day.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
For their debit cards, Visa requires all banks to provide the same protections as part of their agreement. Failure to do so means they can no longer issue any visa cards (debit or credit) or even handle payments made with visa cards. Such a restriction would kill all their merchant accounts (as those merchants would be unable to accept visa cards at all). Unfortunately, MasterCard does not have such a requirement the last time I checked.
In a general sense. They won't invest in new ideas, so while you can have all the brilliant ideas you like, unless you are independantly wealthy you won't get it off the ground here.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
The supermarket across from our offices (UK) recently replaced two cashier positions with 6 self scan positions. They have one cashier attending these 6, not to take money but just to help people, and the volume of people that go through them is fantastic. When I pop in for lunch, I have the option of waiting in line for a cashier, or go through a self scan. The self scan positions always seem to be busy, but you never seem to have to wait for one to free up, they are that much quicker, and the transaction is faster as well.
:)
I got to speak to the technician who services them a few weeks back, and he said each position on average dealt with 150% more traffic during a day than the cashier it replaced. They are doing so well, he said they are looking at putting in more positions. Oh, and they run on WindowsNT4
... including the cashiers. In the Stop-and-Shop there are always long lines at the human checkouts, but never anyone at the self-scan. I've seen people walk by with one bag of nacho cheese Doritos, glance at the self-scan line and say, "Those things are too complicated for me."
Here is an invention you might like to try: reading the articles you link to. If you had done that you would have seen that an American did not invent the automobile, and you would not be looking quite so stupid now.
Stop abusing your karma-bonus.
but you know what? I almost always end up going inside to pay anyway, if only because I'm looking for some sort of beverage, and who wants to make two transactions?
What I really hate is when they make you prepay... at least you can still use the pay-at-pump.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
...automatically advocated the bigger bomb! (:
First off, what bank issued you your debit card? Reputable financial institutions take fraud seriously, so it's surprising they'd 'stone-wall' you.
Second, what would you expect any bank to do in this situation? The vendor (whose obligation - not necessarily the bank's - is to make sure they're charging the right customer) credited you back the money. Aside from the headache of having an extra charge on your account for a few days, you're not ultimately down any money.
Every credit/debit/check card I've ever owned had purchases on them traced exactly the same way. Considering most debit cards work on credit card systems, they reference the places I used them at in the same fashion. Heck, even checks are starting to show up with more information than just the check number, and many banks (even smaller local ones) give you online access to your accounts regardless if you have a credit card through them.
LegendMUD
From my own peculiar experience, the bank machine appears to be in decline. I lived in Canada for the first 10 or 15 years of bank machines. They were great. I did all my banking through them. By law, my own bank couldn't charge me to use it.
(The gov reasoned that since the banks were laying off all the tellers, they couldn't then charge customers to use the machines when the machines were saving the banks money, logically enough. And later, through the 90s, when the banks were selling off prime real estate in city centre's, which bank machines had made redundant, it seemed even less justifiable to charge customers.)
In the late 90s, I moved to the UK and realized
a) I had taken bank machines for granted (I hadn't even been to a bank since I was a kid!),
b) there weren't very many bank machines around,
c) making deposits was no longer possible, and
d) I was either going to walk miles and miles or pay a fee.
So it was a shock. To make matters worse, it seemed there were more generic "ATM" machines which charged £1.50 ($2.77US), than branded machines which could conceivably be free.
I mentioned this to a relative in Canada, who complained that the same thing was happening there. It seems that the banks have got around the charging restrictions in many countries by forming a kind of 3rd party consortium to provide generic "ATM" machines. Once established, the banks can then phase out the free machines, and ensure that everybody pays for every single transaction.
It's inconceivable that the banks could lose money from bank machines. No real estate, no buildings, no employees... how does one lose money? It's like claiming that electronic distrubution costs more than shipping physical product.
In any case, I think bank machines are in decline. There are fewer of them. The charges are rising. Rather than using a machine a few times a day, we now use it once once every two weeks, and then stuff the money under the mattress. That's not progress. In fact, one might be tempted to go back to using a teller and avoiding the charges - but of course, you'd need to find an actual, physical bank with actual, physical tellers.
Is this generic ATM scheme kicking in all over the world?
Is anyone doing anything to stop it?
Barclay
Ermm, I think that's the point, the Lightbulb could be credited to a Brit, the telephone to Germany or Scotland and the Car to France / Germany.
Humerous and informative IMHO, but maybe you were just trolling.
all the ATMs I have seen issue $20s and $50s.
Most of them (probobly not all of them though) do allow you to select your bill mix (do you want that $100 as 5x$20 or 2x$50?)
I've just spent a year of working on 1000+ branch refurbs for Barclays, one of the the big UK high street banks. I was told the way the business operation views it, if they could get away with shutting-down their entirecounter operation, they would do it tomorrow. It's viewed internally as pure loss.
No wonder Barclays was home of the world's first operational ATM - Enfield, 1967...
Why do people waste mod points on trolls who already appear at -1 anyways? That's the lowest a score can get by moderation...
I actually know Don Wetzel and his life would probably be very interesting to read about by both engineers and others. The other things he has done in life would amaze you (he didn't just invent the ATM). He is also very kind and generous. One interesting fact is that he has 40 grandchildren (actually I think it may be 41 now).
Now if he would only teach me the maintence code to the machine so I can make it think the $20's are $1's...
In the US, Federal law dictates that consumers have ZERO liability for fraudulent debits made without the physical debit card. You have 60 days from the mailing date of your bank statement to report any fraudulent use thereon, and still be liable for nothing.
"The response time was long and slow, and he became increasingly irritated as his lunch hour dribbled away. All at once, he had a flash of inspiration. 'Golly, all the BBS does is show messages, take postings, answer questions like "What's my quota?" and transfer files between users,' recalls Wetzel, now 75 and still living in Dallas with his wife. 'Wow, I think we could build a web site that could do that!'"
Check it out: Why Cryptosystems Fail
At one of the local stores, they have machines that have scales to make sure you don't try to steal anything... and what inevitably happens is that if you scan something and do not place it in the bag quickly enough, the damn machine ends up in an infinite loop of "Put the item in the bag!" and "Take the item out of the bag and rescan it!" until either the cashier intervenes, or I kick the machine and it shuts up... not to mention that at any moment, at least one of the machines has crashed.
140,000 *pounds*, or about $240,000.
Why would that get a +2? Damn lazy moderators, read the posts before you blindly hitting the buttons.
Banks make money with each teller and lose about $250/month per ATM. What's so hard to understand about that?
> excuse to keep the $2 service fees.
Nice work moderators. You mod-up a post with a ridiculous conspiracy theory like that. Place read the damn post before hitting the buttons.
- (1) 100
- (1) 50
- (1) 20
- (2) 10
- (2) 5
It seemed pretty cool at first to get all the different denominations. Then I realized I was stuch with a 100 Euro note and it was always a pain finding a place that would take it when I never bought anything expensive with cash. (I usually was able to use it when buying a week's worth of groceries.)Let's play video games with mailmanZERO
You know what the best convenience device is? TP. That's right, Toilet Paper. I'm sure glad I've never had to wipe my ass with corn cobs, rocks, or the Sears catalog.
Whose building is now leased to a church.
(-1, Offtopic)
My new
Sounds like the junk they use at Tescos, what a pain in the ar*e system.
If they can trust you to use a selfpay lane, then they should trust you to do self scanning just like the nice ladies and gentlemen employed at the checkouts use without the hassle of weighing barcoded items as a double check.
Whoops is that at Sainsburys? I forget? :-/
Surely it would be cheaper to employ eastern europeans? They're just as cold and mechanical too.
I carry two cards in my wallet, an Amex for wherever it is accepted and a Visa debit card for everywhere else.
From what I remember of the Seattle Underground tour, there were (nearly) 24/7 "ATMs" running in Seattle in the 1900's.
Specifically, there were booths dotted around the place which had tellers sitting in them. Same exact idea, but without the "A" part of "ATM".
Coming soon - pyrogyra
Well, he did get the patent. After all, his machine came out in 1969, and the 1967 London Barclays one (possibly the one that is often shown on UK television in nostalgia programs) didn't return the card.
..the ATMs will often dispense a variety of bills. When I would withdraw 100 DM (pre-Euro days), it would give me a 50, two 20's, and 10.
I rather liked that. It was nice to have a variety. What would have been nicer if it had an option to allow me to choose which bills I wanted. The trick to such a thing is to make it unobtrusive and optional. Making you do something like that when all you want is quick money would get annoying.
Like those new self-checkout cash registers, ATMs gained popularity because they saved the banks money. They didn't have to hire as many employees or open as many branches, which was a great cost-saving measure.
The difference between the self-checkout cash registers and ATMs is that ATMs are generally much more convenient and quicker to use.
Those self-checkout things are absolutely horrible. It would be one thing if you simply had to scan it and throw it in the bag, paying at the end. But no, it can't be that simple! You have to constantly mess around with the screen, constantly adding and removing items from the bagging area, and the stupid machine is getting pissed off with you for putting the wrong item in the wrong place at the wrong time. Not to mention the things often can't figure out how to handle certain items, so you have to wait for an employee to help you. Waiting in line for a cashier is almost always much faster and easier. The stupid machines are just popular because the company saves money by not having to hire as many employees.
Get a clue, companies! Either keep your employees or make your self-checkout machines quick and easy!
The ATM at my bank is so popular that it is actually faster to walk in, find a live teller and do your transaction than it is to sit outside in a line waiting for the ATM. Is that ironic? Depends on how you define irony.
That isn't special to banks in Canada. The principle of fractional reserve lending is what defines a "bank".
All employees must wash hands before seeking equitable relief.
(insert favorite very-small-shell-script joke here)
The difference between spam and poop is that you don't have to dig through septic tanks looking for real food. -- Me
They Might Be Giants meets Homesstarrunner http://homestarrunner.com/expfilm.html This music videos tune has been stuck in my head for days.
If you read the article, it was actually EUROs, not pounds, which puts it a bit closer to $140k. Note that this was in Ireland, which uses Euros.
is when my ATM at my local branch crashed with my card inside and came back on with and flashed the Windows XP logo, folowed of course with the windows chime. That is the day I knew that my money was not safe.
I dont trust XP at home, i realy dont trust it my money!!!
If you had bothered to follow all three of his links, you might have noticed that they ALL pointed out that an American was not the first to invent the mentioned items. At which point, you might have been able to put the pieces together and discover that he was being sarcastic, and linked those specific articles intentionally.
This is the sort of thing that shouldn't have to be explained, but this is slashdot.
I bank with FirstIB, who doesn't actually own any ATMs at all. Instead of making the investment, they just pay the fees for other bank machines, up to some preset monthly limit. ($6, maybe)
Since I only hit a bank machine every other week or so, this works out very nicely. I can use any ATM anywhere, even the overchage-y ones in bars and tourist spots. It's nice not to have to think about it, and just use the nearest one.
(now choose from 2 alternate endings)
1-...at least, not in these parts...
2-...to do the more complicated steps, like INSERT CARD and ENTER PIN (it seems incredible to me that they can't enter a four digit number, much less *gasp* REMEMBER it!) They still need US to do it for them!
Wotsa matter. too *Heinlein* for you?
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
Here is an invention you might like to try: reading ALL of the articles others link to. If you had done that you would have seen that an American did not invent the automobile or the phone or the car. He was playing on the common misconceptions that Bell invented the phone, Edison the buld and Ford the car (yeah, Ford only perfected the manufacturing, but I don't know who most people think invented the car). If you had read those you might have understood his very obvious point, and you would not be looking quite so stupid now.
Stop abusing your right to post uselessly.
you are stupid and wrong. They scrapped the charges about four years ago. As a Natwest customer (or indeed as a customer of any other UK bank or building society) you can use any bank's machine. The only exceptions are the Moneybox-type machines (not tied to banks), found inside stores and pubs and other convenience locations.
What banks still charge ATM fees? This is a serious question. I haven't paid an ATM fee in at least 5 years.
You mean Darl?
Talk about Prior Art? The first ATM actually was invented and deployed in 1939 ... problem was no one liked it.
World's first ATM
But don't worry Microsoft or Haliburton will be patenting it next week, and the RIAA will make it illegal immediately after that.
I'm sorry, I'm to tired to be witty at the moment so this message will have to do.
from the article: Apparently, Robert Mahoney, chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland and former CEO of Diebold, one of the largest American firms that make the machines, "even the penguins use ATMs."
... what's /. say to THAT?
Money, Penguins, & Diebold
Global warming is neither science, nor politics. It is a religion.
When ATM machine first came out in 1973 at a local bank, later Walpole Bank, behest United California Bank, bestows First Interstate, then ...never mind), now installed one diebold NCR ATM machine in my neighborhood.
Eager to try them out, I sent away an ATM card. Weeks later, an envelope arrived. Ripped it open to reveal a bright competition orange ATM card with my slighty sunken embossed name on it. It looked just like a credit card (holo-logo wasn't out yet). Back then, the PIN number came with the CARD (snicker).
First act was dash down to the bank and insert the card in. I then explored all menu options, just to see what my options were.
Second act was to withdraw what little money I had in my kiddie saving account. Done. not bad.
Third act was to press the deposit (curiosity kills the cat?). It ask for the amount. I entered in $1000.00 and low and behold, the envelope drawer mouth opened up. I stared at it as if a hippo, at the zoo, were beckoning for some food.
After a mad grapple for an envelope and realized that I wasn't going to go through with this notion because I didn't have that much cash on hand (this is 1973 and I was only a kid).
So, after MUCH trepidation, in went the empty envelope. And the monstrous mechanical mouth snapped shut.
Curious about that automated deposit procedure, I checked my balance and I was a thousand RICHER! Way!
Even more curious, I proceed to withdraw the ill-gotten gain. We all recall that ATM has daily limit per account, but no ma'am. This one coughed up all requested $1000 upon withdrawal.
I knew no laws were in place with regard to electronic bank robbery (or illegal electronic fund transfers for that matter). But this was definitely a technical glitch. I can't tell you how wide my grins were. A literal kid in a proverbial candy store.
Walked, no, ran home with those 1K wads of 20s.
(end of the story?) Nope, my dad gets a phone call the following Monday and tells us that "the bank made an error" and that we owed them 1K.
Moral of the Story? There isn't any.
---
Well... Maybe.... Just enjoy life to the limit.
I did read the article, I just misread the funny looking E as the funny looking F.
:-(
Good catch