Though the market for in-store automated teller machines is widely considered saturated, Diebold Inc. of North Canton, Ohio, has some work-arounds in mind for the line it introduced Monday.
Like most merchant ATMs, its new Opteva 500 cannot accept deposits, which would seem to disqualify it for ordinary branch use.
But Jim Merrell, Diebold’s director of global product marketing, said the machines might be attractive to foreign banks, some smaller U.S. banks and credit unions, and independent sales organizations — a market that Diebold has not focused on in the past.
ISOs have deployed two-thirds of the 350,000 to 375,000 ATMs in U.S. merchant locations.
In Asian and Pacific countries, including the Philippines and Thailand, bank lobby ATMs get intensive use even though most consumers make deposits with tellers or through direct deposit, Mr. Merrell said. The Opteva 500 would be “a very good candidate for deployment in those environments,” he said.
And though most U.S. banks use through-the-wall ATMs in their branches, smaller banks and credit unions have expressed interest in cash dispensers, which take up little space, he said.
As for ISOs, Diebold is rethinking its avoidance of them, Mr. Merrell said. “We are certainly eager to speak to off-premise deployers like Cardtronics to see if they have interest,” he said.
Cardtronics Inc. of Houston has deployed 25,000 merchant ATMs, more than anyone else.
The glut of merchant ATMs is thought to have been an important reason for two companies’ selling their merchant ATM networks last summer and a third’s plan to do so.
In July, E-Trade Financial Corp. sold its 12,000-ATM network to Cardtronics. In August, American Express Co. sold its 5,483 machines to 7-Eleven Inc. (All were in 7-Eleven stores). And last month eFunds Corp. said it would sell its 17,000 machines to TRM Corp., an independent ATM operator.
Like Diebold, its main rival, NCR Corp., has a number of lines of cash dispensing machines. But NCR, of Dayton, Ohio, works with ISOs as well as banks, an NCR spokeswoman said.
Tim Sloane, the director for debit advisory services for Mercator Advisory Group of Shrewsbury, Mass., said Diebold’s bank customers will probably use its new cash dispenser “to increase their presence and geography.”
But as for selling to ISOs, it is “awfully late” for Diebold to be getting into that market, Mr. Sloane said.
