Super-ATMs Being Rolled Out

News.com has an article up looking at something I find interesting and somewhat confusing. The Vcom ATM is an attempt to make people's lives more convenient by adding unexpected functionality to the standard Teller Machine. Besides dispensing cash, new ATMs can fulfull the roles of PayPal (by sending money to people), bank (by cashing checks on the spot), and cellphone store (by selling Verizon services). From the article: "The Circle K and Exxon Mobil machines are far more basic than 7-Eleven's Vcoms, which have been called overengineered. Several dozen customers polled informally outside a 7-Eleven in Winter Springs, Fla., recently said that they had never used the Vcom inside, and one woman who said she did use it once to withdraw cash complained that it was 'confusing' and 'complicated,' and added that she would not use it again. 'There were just too many steps,' said the woman, Peggy Baker, who teaches French in Winter Springs. 'And the $1.75 transaction fee was too much--it was painful.' She said she was not interested in the other Vcom features, which require users to enroll and enter a Social Security number on a touch screen."

Comments

In case you want to read it

[MichaelSmith]

TFA

Re:"too many steps"?

[hattig]

I've seen ATMs offer mobile phone top ups for quite a while, which is probably useful if you have a pre-pay mobile.

Anything else takes too long - when there's a queue you aren't going to live long if you start using slow specialist services.

I also happen to think that charging people to get access to their own money is a bit rich, but luckily I'm in the UK so all the standard bank and building society cash machines are free regardless of who you bank with. Going abroad is always a shock though, because we're used to withdrawing smaller amounts of money more frequently than large amounts of money infrequently.

Sorry, didn't RTFA

[bazorg]

Over here in Portugal we have a company called SIBS which is owned by a consortium of banks. They're in charge of managing the network of ATM and the services provided to other companies through those machines.

Possibly the best single feature they rolled out was to make available ATM payments to just about any company wiling to sign up. The first adopters were the utilities companies, that because of this now have less offices and "point of sale" than needed 20 years ago. Today any company can become a client of SIBS and get a 5-number code to be its ID. This ID will be printed on invoices along with another number, which identifies the transaction. Anyone can use an ATM to pay the invoice. Just type in these 2 codes, the amount to be transfered and you're done. The receipt will be printed out and for some services (ie: mobile phone top-ups) you get to see the effect within a couple of seconds.

Building on this basic operation, many companies hired the services of SIBS to add their own menus and sub-menus on the ATMs, so these days there is a quite a lot of stuff you can do:

• buy concert tickets
• buy train tickets
• make bank transfers
• allow/change permissions for automatic payments from your account (ie: allow the water bill to be paid without confirmation)
• top up mobile phones
• pay public transport monthly tickets . this one had some extra work: the public transport tickets have to get in the ATM so their chip gets read/written. They're similar to London's Oyster cards

and so on. overall it's pretty cool and has been working for a while now, that's why I'm surprised that adding bank transfers to ATM operations (in the US?) makes the news on /. in 2006. A few years ago, as banks started to have www-based services, new forms of login information were added to allow people to do at home most of these things, except getting cash out of your printer :)

Surveys are often as dense as granite

[tinkertim]

VCom machines make a fortune from people who normally do not hold bank accounts. The check cashing is ideal for people who work the swing shift and miss most of the check cashing joints an liquor stores.

Many people who don't have a bank account also pay their bills via western union, either a moneygram or purchasing money orders to mail off to someone , or drop in the rent box on the way home.

These people really don't give a rat's ass who gets their social security number, they hope whoever steals it manages to pay off their bills and fix their credit score.

They also don't care about the $1.75 fee, as most people who appreciate the machines don't in fact use the ATM feature.

Vcom cornered a market nobody else has been able to touch. There's a 7-11 in every blue collar neighborhood in most first , and third world countries and those things are popping up globally.

So .. as the game show used to say .. 'SURVEY SAYS' -> once again, nothing useful because the people surveying are just too dense to realize exactly who these things were designed to serve.

Rather swift marketing imho :)

Re:Social Security Legalities?

[Formica]

Um, where exactly did you check on the SSN not being a valid form of identification? http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_154.html