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Merchants Bank, a South Burlington, Vt.-based financial institution, has joined the Allpoint surcharge-free ATM network in a move designed to make the bank more competitive against larger rivals.
"We wanted to provide our customers with more surcharge-free ATM touch points throughout Vermont and when they travel nationally and internationally," Thomas S. Leavitt, Merchant Bank executive vice president, tells ATM&Debit News. The deal's terms were not disclosed.
Before joining Bethesda, Md.-based Allpoint, Merchant's customers had surcharge-free access to 42 ATMs in Vermont. With the new agreement, they will have access to Allpoint's 37,500 surcharge-free ATMs nationally and in the United Kingdom, Mexico and Puerto Rico.
The Allpoint agreement will make Merchants, which has $1.4 billion in assets, more competitive against TD Banknorth, KeyBank and Citizens Bank, Leavitt says.
"TD Bank advertises itself as the nation's most-convenient bank, and convenience is a key driver in customer acquisition," Ben Psillas, Allpoint president, tells ATM&Debit News.
Psillas says the agreement represents a milestone. "We have more than 100 ATMs in Vermont more than 10% of the ATMs deployed throughout the state. But this is the first agreement we have signed with a card issuer in Vermont," Psillas says. Merchants Bank issues MasterCard-branded debit cards to consumer and business customers.
Allpoint, the nation's largest surcharge-free ATM network, measures the success of its network by the number of card transactions processed daily through its ATMs. More than 20 million transactions are processed daily over the Allpoint Network, says Psillas, who did not know how many debit cards Merchants would add to Allpoint's network. Leavitt declined to provide a figure.
Allpoint is not an ATM-sharing network. When a bank joins Allpoint, the bank's ATMs do not participate in the Allpoint ATM network. Houston-based independent sales organization Cardtronics Inc. owns Allpoint.
Allpoint deploys its ATMs in leading retail locations, including stores operated by 7-Eleven Inc., Target Corp. and CVS Caremark Corp. ATM
