Banks and ATM providers have made it a top priority to integrate their ATMs with other services such as mobile payments and online banking, new survey data suggest.
Level Four Software, a Scotland-based ATM software test-service provider, in February conducted the research through an online survey of 50 Europe and United States-based ATM industry professionals.
About 63% of respondents said the biggest change to achieving their ATM goal in 2011 is to increase efforts to add new services to the machines, which mostly include linking ATMs to online banking sites and integrating them with mobile phones.
“ATMs are intelligent machines and the most common touch-point between the bank and consumer,” Level Four CEO Ian Kerr tells PaymentsSource. “Using a combination of the ATM alongside other channels like mobile and the Internet can make ATMs very powerful.”
For example, many banks and ATM providers hope to enable consumers to use their mobile phones at an ATM instead of using a plastic card, Kerr says. The plan is that consumers eventually may use their mobile phones to scan payment card information from their phone screen at an ATM instead of swiping a physical card, Kerr says.
Moreover, if banks integrate ATMs with online-banking sites, both the ATM and the online-banking site would support the same functions, Kerr says.
In the past two years, banks and ATM providers also have increased investment in improving their machines to help increase revenue and improve the customer experience, Kerr says.
In the United Kingdom, many mobile-phone carriers enable consumers to “top-up” their pay-as-you-go mobile-phone accounts at ATMs, Kerr says. Consumers key in their mobile-phone number at an ATM, and the bank transfers funds from their bank account to their mobile-phone account, he explains.
Banks can generate revenue by charging a fee each time a consumer uses an ATM to add funds, Kerr says.
Banks and ATM providers are trying to use mobile-phone technology to help enhance the customer experience at ATMs, says Todd Ablowitz, president of Centennial, Colo.-based Double Diamond Group LLC. Many ATMs enable consumers to receive receipts via text message instead of on a printed paper receipt, he says.
Indeed, “the ATM is a critical link between mobile phones and cash because you need an ATM to dispense cash,” Ablowitz notes. “And in the next few years, the industry will absolutely see a mobile tie-in to ATMs,” he contends.
