7-Eleven Earns Big Returns with Cardtronics Deal

DALLAS – Convenience store chain 7-Eleven will almost triple its initial investment in its ATM fleet when it sells the 5,500 machines to Cardtronics later this month. The company paid $44 million just three years ago to acquire the ATMs from American Express, representing a 45% annualized return on the ATMs. AmEx had purchased the ATMs in 2000 from EDS Corp. The 7-Eleven machines–2,000 of them financial self-service Vcom kiosks–will play a vital role to credit unions, as they will be connected to both the CO-Financial Services ATM network, while the Vcom’s will be hooked into the Financial Service Centers Cooperative shared branching network. The deal will give Cardtronics control over 30,000 ATMs worldwide, 28,500 of them in the U.S., almost twice as many ATMs as the next largest provider, Bank of America. The 10-year deal with 7-Eleven will give Cardtronics the rights to own and operate the ATMs and to place new machines in any new 7-Eleven stores. Cardtronics also provides ATM services to hundreds of credit unions through a co-branding deal with Credit Union 24, and with the surcharge-free Allpoint network.