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."

Comments

A great, but ultimately dated, revolution

[TopShelf]

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.

other denoms

[Skadet]

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?

My favorite ATM story

[John Murdoch]

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.

Ya think?

[Otter]

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.

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.

Sadly, the banks went over the hill.

[Dark Lord Seth]

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.

Sexist comment

[pubjames]

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?

Re:Sexist comment

[N0decam]

Hunter, meet gatherer...

Cavemen would hunt, while the women would gather. Hunting produces large amounts of food at once, but it then has to be stored, while gatherers produce a more steady stream of lesser quantities.

At least that's what Age of Empires taught me.

Re:cold trip

[Deadstick]

My favorite one is at the town bank in Oberwesel, Germany. If you want to use it after hours, you stick your card through a slot in a medieval stone wall and a great iron gate slides open with a gentle hum.

rj