Acknowledging that community banks and credit unions also can have “big bank” ATM security and reliability, NCR Corp. is seeking to expand its ties with smaller financial institutions by offering them an affordable version of its ATM services major banks use, the company announced Aug. 16.
The Duluth, Ga.-based ATM maker’s Total ATM Services package for North American midsize financial institutions “is more of a services play than a [hardware] product play, just taking the components of what we have been providing [large banks] for the last several years and offering it to smaller banks,” Eric Markiewicz, NCR director of solutions marketing and services, tells PaymentsSource.
NCR will make the software upgrade available to use on any older NCR ATMs and for use with the company’s Scalable Deposit Module technology, which enables consumers to deposit cash and checks simultaneously in any orientation through a single slot and is common on NCR SelfServe ATMs (
Smaller institutions could realize overall savings of 15% to 20% per year on the entire portfolio of services because it would eliminate security and analytical tasks normally outsourced at smaller operations, Markiewicz says.
“Because we have so many major banks (as clients), we know how to implement these services, and we have all of this information and data that has been compiled in terms of what works best for these larger banks,” Markiewicz explains. “So we said ‘let’s put this together in a package, with a set of business rules, making it marketable and affordable to the smaller institutions by customizing it ahead of time.’”
Total ATM Services includes NCR’s Incident Management, which provides advanced analytics for ATM monitoring; Predictive Services, which anticipates ATM problems before any downtime; and End-Point Security Services, which ensures software patches are deployed to ATMs and provides protection against known and unknown viruses and malicious software.
Many banks do not have the personnel or the time to perform software fixes or “patches,” so the security service turns the task over to NCR, Markiewicz says.
“We will distribute the hot fix and supply the patches online, and now we’re just taking that and pricing it for smaller banks,” he says.
The Predictive Services program provides transaction and usage data from an ATM on a regular basis and reveals patterns of temporary errors to enable NCR to predict when an older terminal could fail.
“We send someone out to replace that terminal ahead of time, which cuts down on failed transactions or the unit being totally down,” Markiewicz says.
Smaller financial institutions tend to outsource security software and devices that assure compliance with Payment Card Industry data-security standards, and the Total ATM Services would save customers money by addressing those needs, Markiewicz contends.
“NCR enjoys high market share with the bigger banks, and there is no reason why we shouldn’t provide those services for the midsize market space,” Markiewicz reasons. “Everything (ATM equipment) out there with NCR on it can add these services.”
Companies such as NCR and its chief bank-ATM rival Diebold Inc. are starting to steer their higher-end products to a more-affordable level, and it provides an opportunity for smaller banks to get more advanced ATM technology, Gil Luria, an industry consultant with Los Angeles-based Wedbush, tells PaymentsSource.
“The smaller banks try to do many of those tasks in-house but end up outsourcing to a number of different vendors, so there is some real value in what NCR is offering here,” he says.
NCR’s move also makes better use of its technologies, notes David Albertazzi, senior analyst at Boston-based Aite Group. The NCR package can provide a benefit in an area of banking that has been lacking technological strides, he adds.
Banks have to change their approach to ATM service by viewing it as more than a processing tool because their customers expect the machines to be more readily available and always working properly, Albertazzi says.
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