Palmetto Bank in Greenville, S.C., has signed an integrated-services contract with Diebold Inc. — a service that is becoming more important to the automated teller machine maker and its rivals as a way to counter declining sales to U.S. banks.
Palmetto, a regional bank serving upstate South Carolina, has been a Diebold customer since 1995 and deploys 37 of its Opteva ATMs. Under the deal announced last week, Diebold now will handle many of the ATM services previously done by the bank.
"Diebold is ramping up its managed-services business," said Gil Luria, an analyst with Wedbush Securities. "Three years ago, when Diebold introduced integrated services to U.S. banks, they were not interested. But as the economy changed and banks' ATM fleets aged," banks "have become more receptive to the idea."
Providing integrated services eliminates banks' up-front expenses because they do not have to pay $20,000 to $30,000 for a new ATM. Instead, banks pay monthly management fees. Luria said Diebold has integrated-services contracts with about 200 banks.
The North Canton, Ohio, ATM company is using its currency management product to track and analyze cash movement and replenishment within Palmetto's ATM network. Palmetto executives also selected Diebold RemoteLink to boost the $1.4 billion-asset bank's marketing presence. RemoteLink targets bank customers through bank ATMs with advertising and coupons.
The Palmetto agreement includes Diebold Advisor ATM-status monitoring software that can increase the machines' uptime. The technology delivers ATM messages about low cash, low receipt-paper levels, card-reader problems and printer paper jams.
Diebold also is providing Palmetto with software support, keeping the bank's ATM software current and compliant with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards for protecting stored, processed and transmitted cardholder data.
Diebold rivals NCR Corp. and Wincor Nixdorf AG also offer ATM management services.
