Diebold announced Monday that it has sold its cash-recycling ATMs to UniCredit Banca, a subsidiary of the Italian financial services company UniCredit Group.
The Milan-based bank signed a three-year hardware and maintenance services agreement to add roughly 970 Diebold Opteva devices to UniCredit's network.
Half of the machines will feature deposit automation and cash recycling.
Traditionally, ATMs have used two different elements to dispense and receive cash and require couriers to make frequent trips to replenish and empty the separate parts of the machines. That's expensive.
Cash-recycling ATMs, such as Diebold's, rely on merchants making large cash deposits at branches. These machines then dispense that same cash in the same variety of note denominations to anyone making a withdrawal. The ATMs also have the ability to count how much cash they hold.
The cash capacities of the Opteva machines are three to four times higher than standard deposit automation terminals, according to Dave Wetzel, Diebold's vice president and managing director overseeing the company's Europe, Middle East and African markets. "Coupled with cash recycling capabilities, the higher capacity of the ATMs will reduce staffing needs for UniCredit, as well as third-party courier and service costs for managing and replenishing ATMs," Wetzel said in a press release.
UniCredit maintains more than 9,000 branches in Italy, Austria, Russia and southern Germany.
