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An automated teller machine (ATM) or cash machine (in
British English British English (BrE, en-GB, or BE) is, according to Oxford Dictionaries, "English as used in Great Britain, as distinct from that used elsewhere". More narrowly, it can refer specifically to the English language in England, or, more broadl ...
) is an electronic
telecommunications Telecommunication is the transmission of information by various types of technologies over wire, radio, optical, or other electromagnetic systems. It has its origin in the desire of humans for communication over a distance greater than that ...
device that enables customers of
financial institution Financial institutions, sometimes called banking institutions, are business entities that provide services as intermediaries for different types of financial monetary transactions. Broadly speaking, there are three major types of financial inst ...
s to perform
financial transaction A financial transaction is an Contract, agreement, or communication, between a buyer and seller to exchange goods, Service (economics), services, or Asset, assets for payment. Any transaction involves a change in the status of the finances of two ...
s, such as cash withdrawals, deposits, funds transfers, balance inquiries or account information inquiries, at any time and without the need for direct interaction with bank staff. ATMs are known by a variety of names, including automatic teller machine (ATM) in the United States (sometimes redundantly as "ATM machine"). In Canada, the term ''automated banking machine'' (ABM) is also used, although ATM is also very commonly used in Canada, with many Canadian organizations using ATM over ABM. In British English, the terms ''cashpoint'', ''cash machine'' and ''hole in the wall'' are most widely used. Other terms include ''any time money'', ''cashline'', ''tyme machine'', ''cash dispenser'', ''cash corner'', ''bankomat'', or ''bancomat''. ATMs that are not operated by a financial institution are known as " white-label" ATMs. Using an ATM, customers can access their bank deposit or credit accounts in order to make a variety of financial transactions, most notably
cash In economics, cash is money in the physical form of currency, such as banknotes and coins. In bookkeeping and financial accounting, cash is current assets comprising currency or currency equivalents that can be accessed immediately or near-im ...
withdrawals and balance checking, as well as transferring credit to and from mobile phones. ATMs can also be used to withdraw cash in a foreign country. If the currency being withdrawn from the ATM is different from that in which the bank account is denominated, the money will be converted at the financial institution's
exchange rate In finance, an exchange rate is the rate at which one currency will be exchanged for another currency. Currencies are most commonly national currencies, but may be sub-national as in the case of Hong Kong or supra-national as in the case of t ...
. Customers are typically identified by inserting a plastic
ATM card An ATM card is a payment card or dedicated payment card issued by a financial institution (i.e. a bank) which enables a customer to access their financial accounts via its and others' automated teller machines (ATMs) and to make approved point of ...
(or some other acceptable payment card) into the ATM, with authentication being by the customer entering a
personal identification number A personal identification number (PIN), or sometimes redundantly a PIN number or PIN code, is a numeric (sometimes alpha-numeric) passcode used in the process of authenticating a user accessing a system. The PIN has been the key to facilitati ...
(PIN), which must match the PIN stored in the chip on the card (if the card is so equipped), or in the issuing financial institution's database. According to the ATM Industry Association (ATMIA), , there were close to 3.5 million ATMs installed worldwide. However, the use of ATMs is gradually declining with the increase in cashless payment systems.


History

The idea of out-of-hours cash distribution developed from bankers' needs in Japan, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. In 1960
Luther George Simjian Luther George Simjian (January 28, 1905October 23, 1997) was an Armenian-American inventor and entrepreneur. A prolific and professional inventor, he held over 200 patents, mostly related to optics and electronics. His most significant inventions ...
invented an automated deposit machine (accepting coins, cash and cheques) although it did not have cash dispensing features. His US patent was first filed on 30 June 1960 and granted on 26 February 1963. The roll-out of this machine, called Bankograph, was delayed by a couple of years, due in part to Simjian's Reflectone Electronics Inc. being acquired by Universal Match Corporation. An experimental Bankograph was installed in
New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
in 1961 by the City Bank of New York, but removed after six months due to the lack of customer acceptance. In 1962 Adrian Ashfield invented the idea of a card system to securely identify a user and control and monitor the dispensing of goods or services. This was granted UK Patent 959,713 in June 1964 and assigned to Kins Developments Limited. A Japanese device called the "Computer Loan Machine" supplied cash as a three-month loan at 5% p.a. after inserting a credit card. The device was operational in 1966. However, little is known about the device. A cash machine was put into use by
Barclays Bank Barclays () is a British multinational universal bank, headquartered in London, England. Barclays operates as two divisions, Barclays UK and Barclays International, supported by a service company, Barclays Execution Services. Barclays traces ...
in its
Enfield Town Enfield is a large town in north London, England, north of Charing Cross. It had a population of 156,858 in 2018. It includes the areas of Botany Bay, Brimsdown, Bulls Cross, Bullsmoor, Bush Hill Park, Clay Hill, Crews Hill, Enfield High ...
branch in
North London North London is the northern part of London, England, north of the River Thames. It extends from Clerkenwell and Finsbury, on the edge of the City of London financial district, to Greater London's boundary with Hertfordshire. The term ''nor ...
, United Kingdom, on 27 June 1967. This machine was inaugurated by English comedy actor
Reg Varney Reginald Alfred Varney (11 July 1916 – 16 November 2008) was an English actor, entertainer and comedian. He is best remembered for having played the lead role of bus driver Stan Butler in the LWT sitcom ''On the Buses'' (1969–73) and its th ...
. This instance of the invention is credited to the engineering team led by
John Shepherd-Barron John Adrian Shepherd-Barron OBE (23 June 1925 – 15 May 2010) was an India-born British inventor, who led the team that installed the first cash machine, sometimes referred to as the automated teller machine or ATM. Early life John Adrian Shep ...
of printing firm
De La Rue De La Rue plc (, ) is a British company headquartered in Basingstoke, England, that designs and produces banknotes, secure polymer substrate and banknote security features (including security holograms, security threads and security printe ...
, who was awarded an OBE in the
2005 New Year Honours New Year Honours were granted in the United Kingdom and New Zealand at the start of 2005. Among these in the UK were knighthoods awarded to Mike Tomlinson, the educationalist; Derek Wanless, who led a review of the National Health Service; an ...
. Transactions were initiated by inserting paper cheques issued by a teller or cashier, marked with
carbon-14 Carbon-14, C-14, or radiocarbon, is a radioactive isotope of carbon with an atomic nucleus containing 6 protons and 8 neutrons. Its presence in organic materials is the basis of the radiocarbon dating method pioneered by Willard Libby and co ...
for machine readability and security, which in a later model were matched with a four-digit
personal identification number A personal identification number (PIN), or sometimes redundantly a PIN number or PIN code, is a numeric (sometimes alpha-numeric) passcode used in the process of authenticating a user accessing a system. The PIN has been the key to facilitati ...
(PIN). Shepherd-Barron stated "It struck me there must be a way I could get my own money, anywhere in the world or the UK. I hit upon the idea of a chocolate bar dispenser, but replacing chocolate with cash." The Barclays–De La Rue machine (called De La Rue Automatic Cash System or DACS) beat the Swedish saving banks' and a company called Metior's machine (a device called Bankomat) by a mere nine days and Westminster Bank'sSmith IndustriesChubb system (called Chubb MD2) by a month. The online version of the Swedish machine is listed to have been operational on 6 May 1968, while claiming to be the first online ATM in the world, ahead of similar claims by IBM and
Lloyds Bank Lloyds Bank plc is a British retail and commercial bank with branches across England and Wales. It has traditionally been considered one of the " Big Four" clearing banks. Lloyds Bank is the largest retail bank in Britain, and has an exte ...
in 1971, and Oki in 1970. The collaboration of a small start-up called Speytec and
Midland Bank Midland Bank Plc was one of the Big Four banking groups in the United Kingdom for most of the 20th century. It is now part of HSBC. The bank was founded as the Birmingham and Midland Bank in Union Street, Birmingham, England in August 1836. It ...
developed a fourth machine which was marketed after 1969 in Europe and the US by the
Burroughs Corporation The Burroughs Corporation was a major American manufacturer of business equipment. The company was founded in 1886 as the American Arithmometer Company. In 1986, it merged with Sperry UNIVAC to form Unisys. The company's history paralleled many ...
. The patent for this device (GB1329964) was filed in September 1969 (and granted in 1973) by John David Edwards, Leonard Perkins, John Henry Donald, Peter Lee Chappell, Sean Benjamin Newcombe, and Malcom David Roe. Both the DACS and MD2 accepted only a single-use token or voucher which was retained by the machine, while the Speytec worked with a card with a magnetic stripe at the back. They used principles including
Carbon-14 Carbon-14, C-14, or radiocarbon, is a radioactive isotope of carbon with an atomic nucleus containing 6 protons and 8 neutrons. Its presence in organic materials is the basis of the radiocarbon dating method pioneered by Willard Libby and co ...
and low-coercivity
magnetism Magnetism is the class of physical attributes that are mediated by a magnetic field, which refers to the capacity to induce attractive and repulsive phenomena in other entities. Electric currents and the magnetic moments of elementary particles ...
in order to make fraud more difficult. The idea of a PIN stored on the card was developed by a group of engineers working at
Smiths Group Smiths Group plc is a British, multinational, diversified engineering business headquartered in London, England. It operates in over 50 countries and employs 14,600 staff. Smiths Group has its origins in a jewellery shop, ''S Smith & Sons'', ...
on the Chubb MD2 in 1965 and which has been credited to
James Goodfellow James Goodfellow OBE, KCHS, FIIE (born 1937) is a Scottish inventor. In 1966, he patented personal identification number (PIN) technology and an automated teller machine (ATM). He is generally considered the inventor of the modern ATM. G ...
(patent GB1197183 filed on 2 May 1966 with Anthony Davies). The essence of this system was that it enabled the verification of the customer with the debited account without human intervention. This patent is also the earliest instance of a complete "currency dispenser system" in the patent record. This patent was filed on 5 March 1968 in the US (US 3543904) and granted on 1 December 1970. It had a profound influence on the industry as a whole. Not only did future entrants into the cash dispenser market such as
NCR Corporation NCR Corporation, previously known as National Cash Register, is an American software, consulting and technology company providing several professional services and electronic products. It manufactures self-service kiosks, point-of-sale termin ...
and IBM licence Goodfellow's PIN system, but a number of later patents reference this patent as "Prior Art Device".


Propagation

Devices designed by British (i.e. Chubb, De La Rue) and Swedish (i.e. Asea Meteor) quickly spread out. For example, given its link with
Barclays Barclays () is a British multinational universal bank, headquartered in London, England. Barclays operates as two divisions, Barclays UK and Barclays International, supported by a service company, Barclays Execution Services. Barclays traces ...
,
Bank of Scotland The Bank of Scotland plc (Scottish Gaelic: ''Banca na h-Alba'') is a commercial and clearing bank based in Scotland and is part of the Lloyds Banking Group, following the Bank of Scotland's implosion in 2008. The bank was established by th ...
deployed a DACS in 1968 under th
'Scotcash'
brand. Customers were given personal code numbers to activate the machines, similar to the modern PIN. They were also supplied with £10 vouchers. These were fed into the machine, and the corresponding amount debited from the customer's account. A Chubb-made ATM appeared in
Sydney Sydney ( ) is the capital city of the state of New South Wales, and the most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Sydney Harbour and extends about towards the Blue Mounta ...
in 1969. This was the first ATM installed in
Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands. With an area of , Australia is the largest country by ...
. The machine only dispensed $25 at a time and the bank card itself would be mailed to the user after the bank had processed the withdrawal. Asea Metior's Bancomat was the first ATM installed in
Spain , image_flag = Bandera de España.svg , image_coat = Escudo de España (mazonado).svg , national_motto = '' Plus ultra'' (Latin)(English: "Further Beyond") , national_anthem = (English: "Royal March") , ...
on 9 January 1969, in central
Madrid Madrid ( , ) is the capital and most populous city of Spain. The city has almost 3.4 million inhabitants and a metropolitan area population of approximately 6.7 million. It is the second-largest city in the European Union (EU), and ...
by
Banesto Banco Español de Crédito, S.A. (), “Spanish Credit Bank”) better known as Banesto, was a Spanish multinational financial services company. Prior to the Spanish Government's historical intervention in 1993, the very first in the history of ...
. This device dispensed 1,000 peseta bills (1 to 5 max). Each user had to introduce a security personal key using a combination of the ten numeric buttons. In March of the same year an ad with the instructions to use the Bancomat was published in the same newspaper.


Docutel in the United States

After looking firsthand at the experiences in Europe, in 1968 the ATM was pioneered in the U.S. by
Donald Wetzel Donald C. Wetzel (born January 3, 1929) is an American businessman known for holding the USA patent to the automatic teller machine. Born in New Orleans, Louisiana, he graduated from Jesuit High School (New Orleans) in 1947 and got a B.Sc. in for ...
, who was a department head at a company called Docutel. Docutel was a subsidiary of Recognition Equipment Inc of
Dallas Dallas () is the third largest city in Texas and the largest city in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, the fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States at 7.5 million people. It is the largest city in and seat of Dallas County ...
,
Texas Texas (, ; Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2020, it is the second-largest U.S. state by ...
, which was producing optical scanning equipment and had instructed Docutel to explore automated baggage handling and automated gasoline pumps. On 2 September 1969,
Chemical Bank Chemical Bank was a bank with headquarters in New York City from 1824 until 1996. At the end of 1995, Chemical was the third-largest bank in the U.S., with about $182.9 billion in assets and more than 39,000 employees around the world. Beginning ...
installed a prototype ATM in the U.S. at its branch in
Rockville Centre, New York Rockville Centre, commonly abbreviated as RVC, is an incorporated village located in the Town of Hempstead in Nassau County, on the South Shore of Long Island, in New York, United States. The population was 24,023 at the 2010 census. Hist ...
. The first ATMs were designed to dispense a fixed amount of cash when a user inserted a specially coded card. A Chemical Bank advertisement boasted "On Sept. 2 our bank will open at 9:00 and never close again." Chemical's ATM, initially known as a Docuteller was designed by
Donald Wetzel Donald C. Wetzel (born January 3, 1929) is an American businessman known for holding the USA patent to the automatic teller machine. Born in New Orleans, Louisiana, he graduated from Jesuit High School (New Orleans) in 1947 and got a B.Sc. in for ...
and his company Docutel. Chemical executives were initially hesitant about the electronic banking transition given the high cost of the early machines. Additionally, executives were concerned that customers would resist having machines handling their money. In 1995, the
Smithsonian National Museum of American History The National Museum of American History: Kenneth E. Behring Center collects, preserves, and displays the heritage of the United States in the areas of social, political, cultural, scientific, and military history. Among the items on display is t ...
recognised Docutel and Wetzel as the inventors of the networked ATM. To show confidence in Docutel, Chemical installed the first four production machines in a marketing test that proved they worked reliably, customers would use them and even pay a fee for usage. Based on this, banks around the country began to experiment with ATM installations. By 1974, Docutel had acquired 70 percent of the U.S. market; but as a result of the early 1970s worldwide recession and its reliance on a single product line, Docutel lost its independence and was forced to merge with the U.S. subsidiary of
Olivetti Olivetti S.p.A. is an Italian manufacturer of computers, tablets, smartphones, printers and other such business products as calculators and fax machines. Headquartered in Ivrea, in the Metropolitan City of Turin, the company has been par ...
. In 1973, Wetzel was grante
U.S. Patent # 3,761,682
the application had been filed in October 1971. However, the U.S. patent record cites at least three previous applications from Docutel, all relevant to the development of the ATM and where Wetzel does not figure, namel

ttp://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=3651976.PN.&OS=PN/3651976&RS=PN/3651976 U.S. Patent # 3651976an
U.S. Patent # 3,68,569
These patents are all credited to Kenneth S. Goldstein, MR Karecki, TR Barnes, GR Chastian and John D. White.


Further advances

In April 1971,
Busicom was a Japanese company that manufactured and sold computer-related products headquartered in Taito, Tokyo. It owned the rights to Intel's first microprocessor, the Intel 4004, which they created in partnership with Intel in 1970. Busicom ask ...
began to manufacture ATMs based on the first commercial
microprocessor A microprocessor is a computer processor where the data processing logic and control is included on a single integrated circuit, or a small number of integrated circuits. The microprocessor contains the arithmetic, logic, and control circ ...
, the
Intel 4004 The Intel 4004 is a 4-bit central processing unit (CPU) released by Intel Corporation in 1971. Sold for US$60, it was the first commercially produced microprocessor, and the first in a long line of Intel CPUs. The 4004 was the first significa ...
. Busicom manufactured these microprocessor-based automated teller machines for several buyers, with
NCR Corporation NCR Corporation, previously known as National Cash Register, is an American software, consulting and technology company providing several professional services and electronic products. It manufactures self-service kiosks, point-of-sale termin ...
as the main customer.
Mohamed Atalla Mohamed M. Atalla ( ar, محمد عطاالله; August 4, 1924 – December 30, 2009) was an Egyptian-American engineer, physicist, cryptographer, inventor and entrepreneur. He was a semiconductor pioneer who made important contributions t ...
invented the first
hardware security module A hardware security module (HSM) is a physical computing device that safeguards and manages secrets (most importantly digital keys), performs encryption and decryption functions for digital signatures, strong authentication and other cryptogr ...
(HSM), dubbed the "Atalla Box", a security system which encrypted PIN and ATM messages, and protected offline devices with an un-guessable PIN-generating key. In March 1972, Atalla filed for his PIN verification system, which included an encoded
card reader A card reader is a data input device that reads data from a card-shaped storage medium. The first were punched card readers, which read the paper or cardboard punched cards that were used during the first several decades of the computer industry ...
and described a system that utilized
encryption In cryptography, encryption is the process of encoding information. This process converts the original representation of the information, known as plaintext, into an alternative form known as ciphertext. Ideally, only authorized parties can d ...
techniques to assure telephone link security while entering personal ID information that was transmitted to a remote location for verification. He founded
Atalla Corporation Utimaco Atalla, founded as Atalla Technovation and formerly known as Atalla Corporation or HP Atalla, is a security vendor, active in the market segments of data security and cryptography. Atalla provides government-grade end-to-end products in ...
(now
Utimaco Atalla Utimaco Atalla, founded as Atalla Technovation and formerly known as Atalla Corporation or HP Atalla, is a security vendor, active in the market segments of data security and cryptography. Atalla provides government-grade end-to-end products in ...
) in 1972, and commercially launched the "Atalla Box" in 1973. The product was released as the Identikey. It was a card reader and customer identification system, providing a terminal with
plastic card A debit card, also known as a check card or bank card is a payment card that can be used in place of cash to make purchases. The term '' plastic card'' includes the above and as an identity document. These are similar to a credit card, but u ...
and PIN capabilities. The Identikey system consisted of a card reader console, two customer PIN pads, intelligent controller and built-in electronic interface package. The device consisted of two
keypads A keypad is a block or pad of buttons set with an arrangement of digits, symbols, or alphabetical letters. Pads mostly containing numbers and used with computers are numeric keypads. Keypads are found on devices which require mainly numeric inp ...
, one for the customer and one for the teller. It allowed the customer to type in a secret code, which is transformed by the device, using a microprocessor, into another code for the teller. During a transaction, the customer's account number was read by the card reader. This process replaced manual entry and avoided possible key stroke errors. It allowed users to replace traditional customer verification methods such as signature verification and test questions with a secure PIN system. The success of the "Atalla Box" led to the wide adoption of hardware security modules in ATMs. Its PIN verification process was similar to the later
IBM 3624 The IBM 3624 was released in 1978 as a second-generation automatic teller machine (ATM), a successor to the IBM 3614. Designed at the IBM Los Gatos lab, the IBM 3624, along with the later IBM 4732 model, was manufactured at IBM facilities in Charlo ...
. Atalla's HSM products protect 250million card transactions every day as of 2013, and secure the majority of the world's ATM transactions as of 2014. The IBM 2984 was a modern ATM and came into use at Lloyds Bank, High Street, Brentwood, Essex, the UK in December 1972. The IBM 2984 was designed at the request of
Lloyds Bank Lloyds Bank plc is a British retail and commercial bank with branches across England and Wales. It has traditionally been considered one of the " Big Four" clearing banks. Lloyds Bank is the largest retail bank in Britain, and has an exte ...
. The 2984 Cash Issuing Terminal was a true ATM, similar in function to today's machines and named Cashpoint by Lloyds Bank. Cashpoint is still a
registered trademark The registered trademark symbol, , is a typographic symbol that provides notice that the preceding word or symbol is a trademark or service mark that has been registered with a national trademark office. A trademark is a symbol, word, or wor ...
of Lloyds Banking Group in the UK but is often used as a
generic trademark A generic trademark, also known as a genericized trademark or proprietary eponym, is a trademark or brand name that, because of its popularity or significance, has become the generic term for, or synonymous with, a general class of products ...
to refer to ATMs of all UK banks. All were online and issued a variable amount which was immediately deducted from the account. A small number of 2984s were supplied to a U.S. bank. A couple of well known historical models of ATMs include the Atalla Box, IBM 3614,
IBM 3624 The IBM 3624 was released in 1978 as a second-generation automatic teller machine (ATM), a successor to the IBM 3614. Designed at the IBM Los Gatos lab, the IBM 3624, along with the later IBM 4732 model, was manufactured at IBM facilities in Charlo ...
and 473x series,
Diebold 10xx The Diebold 10xx (or Modular Delivery System, MDS) series is a third and fourth generation family of automated teller machines manufactured by Diebold. History Introduced in 1985 as a successor to the TABS 9000 series, the 10xx family of ATMs was r ...
and TABS 9000 series, NCR 1780 and earlier NCR 770 series. The first switching system to enable shared automated teller machines between banks went into production operation on 3 February 1979, in Denver, Colorado, in an effort by Colorado National Bank of Denver and Kranzley and Company of Cherry Hill, New Jersey. In 2012, a new ATM at
Royal Bank of Scotland The Royal Bank of Scotland plc (RBS; gd, Banca Rìoghail na h-Alba) is a major retail and commercial bank in Scotland. It is one of the retail banking subsidiaries of NatWest Group, together with NatWest (in England and Wales) and Ulster B ...
allowed customers to withdraw cash up to £130 without a card by inputting a six-digit code requested through their smartphones.


Location

ATMs can be placed at any location but are most often placed near or inside banks, shopping centers/malls, airports,
railway station Rail transport (also known as train transport) is a means of transport that transfers passengers and goods on wheeled vehicles running on rails, which are incorporated in Track (rail transport), tracks. In contrast to road transport, where the ...
s,
metro station A metro station or subway station is a station for a rapid transit system, which as a whole is usually called a "metro" or "subway". A station provides a means for passengers to purchase tickets, board trains, and evacuate the system in t ...
s, grocery stores, petrol/gas stations, restaurants, and other locations. ATMs are also found on
cruise ship Cruise ships are large passenger ships used mainly for vacationing. Unlike ocean liners, which are used for transport, cruise ships typically embark on round-trip voyages to various ports-of-call, where passengers may go on tours known as ...
s and on some
US Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage ...
ships, where sailors can draw out their pay. ATMs may be on- and off-premises. On-premises ATMs are typically more advanced, multi-function machines that complement a bank branch's capabilities, and are thus more expensive. Off-premises machines are deployed by financial institutions and independent sales organisations (ISOs) where there is a simple need for cash, so they are generally cheaper single-function devices. In the US, Canada and some Gulf countries, banks may have
drive-thru A drive-through or drive-thru (a sensational spelling of the word ''through''), is a type of take-out service provided by a business that allows customers to purchase products without leaving their cars. The format was pioneered in the Unite ...
lanes providing access to ATMs using an automobile. In recent times, countries like India and some countries in Africa are installing solar-powered ATMs in rural areas. The world's highest ATM is located at the
Khunjerab Pass Khunjerab Pass (; ; ug, قونجىراپ ئېغىزى) is a mountain pass in the Karakoram Mountains, in a strategic position on the northern border of Pakistan (Gilgit–Baltistan's Hunza and Nagar Districts) and on the southwest border of Ch ...
in
Pakistan Pakistan ( ur, ), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan ( ur, , label=none), is a country in South Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, fifth-most populous country, with a population of almost 24 ...
. Installed at an elevation of by the
National Bank of Pakistan National Bank of Pakistan (NBP) () is a Pakistani government-owned multinational commercial bank which is a subsidiary of State Bank of Pakistan. It is headquartered in Karachi, Pakistan. As of September 2020, it has 1,511 branches across Paki ...
, it is designed to work in temperatures as low as -40-degree Celsius.


Financial networks

Most ATMs are connected to
interbank network An interbank network, also known as an ATM consortium or ATM network, is a computer network that enables ATM cards issued by a financial institution that is a member of the network to be used to perform ATM transactions through ATMs that belo ...
s, enabling people to withdraw and deposit money from machines not belonging to the bank where they have their accounts or in the countries where their accounts are held (enabling cash withdrawals in local currency). Some examples of interbank networks include
NYCE The New York Currency Exchange (NYCE) is an interbank network connecting the ATMs of various financial institutions in the United States and Canada. NYCE also serves as an EFTPOS network for NYCE-linked ATM cards. NYCE is based in Secaucus, ...
,
PULSE In medicine, a pulse represents the tactile arterial palpation of the cardiac cycle (heartbeat) by trained fingertips. The pulse may be palpated in any place that allows an artery to be compressed near the surface of the body, such as at the n ...
,
PLUS Plus may refer to: Mathematics * Addition * +, the mathematical sign Music * ''+'' (Ed Sheeran album), (pronounced "plus"), 2011 * ''Plus'' (Cannonball Adderley Quintet album), 1961 * ''Plus'' (Matt Nathanson EP), 2003 * ''Plus'' (Martin Ga ...
,
Cirrus Cirrus may refer to: Science *Cirrus (biology), any of various thin, thread-like structures on the body of an animal *Cirrus (botany), a tendril * Infrared cirrus, in astronomy, filamentary structures seen in infrared light *Cirrus cloud, a typ ...
,
AFFN The Armed Forces Financial Network (AFFN) is an interbank network. It provides electronic financial transactions services to the military banking and defense credit union sector. It connects approximately 346 banks and credit unions with over 800, ...
,
Interac Interac is a Canadian interbank network that links financial institutions and other enterprises for the purpose of exchanging electronic financial transactions. Interac serves as the Canadian debit card system and the predominant funds transf ...
, Interswitch,
STAR A star is an astronomical object comprising a luminous spheroid of plasma (physics), plasma held together by its gravity. The List of nearest stars and brown dwarfs, nearest star to Earth is the Sun. Many other stars are visible to the naked ...
, LINK,
MegaLink MegaLink (also spelled Megalink) is a Philippine-based developer of mobile and banking software as well as a service provider for banks, specifically for automatic teller machine networks and point of sale systems of banks in the country. Fro ...
, and
BancNet BancNet (also spelled Bancnet) is a Philippine-based interbank network connecting the ATM networks of local and offshore banks, and the country's single interbank network in the Philippines in terms of the number of member banks and annual tr ...
. ATMs rely on the authorization of a
financial transaction A financial transaction is an Contract, agreement, or communication, between a buyer and seller to exchange goods, Service (economics), services, or Asset, assets for payment. Any transaction involves a change in the status of the finances of two ...
by the card issuer or other authorizing institution on a communications network. This is often performed through an
ISO 8583 ISO 8583 is an international standard for ''financial transaction card originated'' interchange messaging. It is the International Organization for Standardization standard for systems that exchange electronic transactions initiated by cardholde ...
messaging system. Many banks charge
ATM usage fees ATM usage fees are the fees that many banks and interbank networks charge for the use of their automated teller machines (ATMs). In some cases, these fees are assessed solely for non-members of the bank; in other cases, they apply to all users. ...
. In some cases, these fees are charged solely to users who are not customers of the bank that operates the ATM; in other cases, they apply to all users. In order to allow a more diverse range of devices to attach to their networks, some interbank networks have passed rules expanding the definition of an ATM to be a terminal that either has the vault within its footprint or utilises the vault or cash drawer within the merchant establishment, which allows for the use of a scrip cash dispenser. ATMs typically connect directly to their host or ATM Controller on either
ADSL Asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) is a type of digital subscriber line (DSL) technology, a data communications technology that enables faster data transmission over copper telephone lines than a conventional voiceband modem can provide. ...
or dial-up
modem A modulator-demodulator or modem is a computer hardware device that converts data from a digital format into a format suitable for an analog transmission medium such as telephone or radio. A modem transmits data by modulating one or more c ...
over a
telephone A telephone is a telecommunications device that permits two or more users to conduct a conversation when they are too far apart to be easily heard directly. A telephone converts sound, typically and most efficiently the human voice, into e ...
line or directly on a leased line. Leased lines are preferable to
plain old telephone service Plain old telephone service (POTS), or plain ordinary telephone system, is a retronym for voice-grade telephone service employing analog signal transmission over copper loops. POTS was the standard service offering from telephone companies from 1 ...
(POTS) lines because they require less time to establish a connection. Less-trafficked machines will usually rely on a dial-up modem on a POTS line rather than using a leased line, since a leased line may be comparatively more expensive to operate compared to a POTS line. That dilemma may be solved as high-speed Internet
VPN A virtual private network (VPN) extends a private network across a public network and enables users to send and receive data across shared or public networks as if their computing devices were directly connected to the private network. The be ...
connections become more ubiquitous. Common lower-level layer communication protocols used by ATMs to communicate back to the bank include SNA over SDLC, TC500 over Async,
X.25 X.25 is an ITU-T standard protocol suite for packet-switched data communication in wide area networks (WAN). It was originally defined by the International Telegraph and Telephone Consultative Committee (CCITT, now ITU-T) in a series of drafts a ...
, and
TCP/IP The Internet protocol suite, commonly known as TCP/IP, is a framework for organizing the set of communication protocols used in the Internet and similar computer networks according to functional criteria. The foundational protocols in the su ...
over
Ethernet Ethernet () is a family of wired computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks (LAN), metropolitan area networks (MAN) and wide area networks (WAN). It was commercially introduced in 1980 and first standardized in 1 ...
. In addition to methods employed for transaction security and secrecy, all communications traffic between the ATM and the Transaction Processor may also be encrypted using methods such as
SSL SSL may refer to: Entertainment * RoboCup Small Size League, robotics football competition * ''Sesame Street Live'', a touring version of the children's television show * StarCraft II StarLeague, a Korean league in the video game Natural language ...
. 2021


Global use

There are no hard international or government-compiled numbers totaling the complete number of ATMs in use worldwide. Estimates developed by
ATMIA The ATM Industry Association (ATMIA), originally the ATM Owners Association, was established in 1997 in the United States as a global nonprofit trade association to service an industry that built around the global growth of the ATM. History ...
place the number of ATMs currently in use at 3 million units, or approximately 1 ATM per 3,000 people in the world. To simplify the analysis of ATM usage around the world, financial institutions generally divide the world into seven regions, based on the penetration rates, usage statistics, and features deployed. Four regions (USA, Canada, Europe, and Japan) have high numbers of ATMs per million people. Despite the large number of ATMs, there is additional demand for machines in the Asia/Pacific area as well as in Latin America.
Macau Macau or Macao (; ; ; ), officially the Macao Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (MSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China in the western Pearl River Delta by the South China Sea. With a pop ...
may have the highest density of ATMs at 254 ATMs per 100,000 adults. ATMs have yet to reach high numbers in the Near East and Africa.


Hardware

An ATM is typically made up of the following devices: *
CPU A central processing unit (CPU), also called a central processor, main processor or just processor, is the electronic circuitry that executes instructions comprising a computer program. The CPU performs basic arithmetic, logic, controlling, a ...
(to control the user interface and transaction devices) *
Magnetic Magnetism is the class of physical attributes that are mediated by a magnetic field, which refers to the capacity to induce attractive and repulsive phenomena in other entities. Electric currents and the magnetic moments of elementary particl ...
or
chip card A smart card, chip card, or integrated circuit card (ICC or IC card) is a physical electronic authentication device, used to control access to a resource. It is typically a plastic credit card-sized card with an embedded integrated circuit (IC) c ...
reader (to identify the customer) * a PIN pad for accepting and encrypting
personal identification number A personal identification number (PIN), or sometimes redundantly a PIN number or PIN code, is a numeric (sometimes alpha-numeric) passcode used in the process of authenticating a user accessing a system. The PIN has been the key to facilitati ...
EPP4 (similar in layout to a
touch tone Dual-tone multi-frequency signaling (DTMF) is a telecommunication signaling system using the voice-frequency band over telephone lines between telephone equipment and other communications devices and switching centers. DTMF was first developed ...
or
calculator An electronic calculator is typically a portable electronic device used to perform calculations, ranging from basic arithmetic to complex mathematics. The first solid-state electronic calculator was created in the early 1960s. Pocket-sized ...
keypad), manufactured as part of a secure enclosure *
Secure cryptoprocessor A secure cryptoprocessor is a dedicated computer-on-a-chip or microprocessor for carrying out cryptographic operations, embedded in a packaging with multiple physical security measures, which give it a degree of tamper resistance. Unlike crypt ...
, generally within a secure enclosure * Display (used by the customer for performing the transaction) *
Function key A function key is a key on a computer or terminal keyboard that can be programmed so as to cause an operating system command interpreter or application program to perform certain actions, a form of soft key. On some keyboards/computers, function ...
buttons (usually close to the display) or a
touchscreen A touchscreen or touch screen is the assembly of both an input ('touch panel') and output ('display') device. The touch panel is normally layered on the top of an electronic visual display of an information processing system. The display is ofte ...
(used to select the various aspects of the transaction) * Record printer (to provide the customer with a record of the transaction) *
Vault Vault may refer to: * Jumping, the act of propelling oneself upwards Architecture * Vault (architecture), an arched form above an enclosed space * Bank vault, a reinforced room or compartment where valuables are stored * Burial vault (enclosure ...
(to store the parts of the machinery requiring restricted access) * Housing (for aesthetics and to attach signage to) * Sensors and indicators Due to heavier computing demands and the falling price of
personal computer A personal computer (PC) is a multi-purpose microcomputer whose size, capabilities, and price make it feasible for individual use. Personal computers are intended to be operated directly by an end user, rather than by a computer expert or te ...
–like architectures, ATMs have moved away from custom hardware architectures using
microcontroller A microcontroller (MCU for ''microcontroller unit'', often also MC, UC, or μC) is a small computer on a single VLSI integrated circuit (IC) chip. A microcontroller contains one or more CPUs ( processor cores) along with memory and programmabl ...
s or
application-specific integrated circuit An application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC ) is an integrated circuit (IC) chip customized for a particular use, rather than intended for general-purpose use, such as a chip designed to run in a digital voice recorder or a high-effici ...
s and have adopted the hardware architecture of a personal computer, such as USB connections for peripherals, Ethernet and IP communications, and use personal computer operating systems. Business owners often lease ATMs from service providers. However, based on the economies of scale, the price of equipment has dropped to the point where many business owners are simply paying for ATMs using a credit card. New ADA voice and text-to-speech guidelines imposed in 2010, but required by March 2012 have forced many ATM owners to either upgrade non-compliant machines or dispose them if they are not upgradable, and purchase new compliant equipment. This has created an avenue for hackers and thieves to obtain ATM hardware at junkyards from improperly disposed decommissioned machines. The vault of an ATM is within the footprint of the device itself and is where items of value are kept.
Scrip A scrip (or ''chit'' in India) is any substitute for legal tender. It is often a form of credit. Scrips have been created and used for a variety of reasons, including exploitive payment of employees under truck systems; or for use in local co ...
cash dispensers, which print a receipt or scrip instead of cash, do not incorporate a vault. Mechanisms found inside the vault may include: * Dispensing mechanism (to provide
cash In economics, cash is money in the physical form of currency, such as banknotes and coins. In bookkeeping and financial accounting, cash is current assets comprising currency or currency equivalents that can be accessed immediately or near-im ...
or other items of value) * Deposit mechanism including a cheque processing module and bulk note acceptor (to allow the customer to make deposits) * Security sensors (magnetic, thermal, seismic, gas) * Locks (to control access to the contents of the vault) * Journaling systems; many are electronic (a sealed flash memory device based on in-house standards) or a solid-state device (an actual printer) which accrues all records of activity including access timestamps, number of notes dispensed, etc. This is considered sensitive data and is secured in similar fashion to the cash as it is a similar liability. ATM vaults are supplied by manufacturers in several grades. Factors influencing vault grade selection include cost, weight, regulatory requirements, ATM type, operator risk avoidance practices and internal volume requirements. Industry standard vault configurations include
Underwriters Laboratories The UL enterprise is a global safety science company headquartered in Northbrook, Illinois, composed of three organizations, UL Research Institutes, UL Standards & Engagement and UL Solutions. Established in 1894, the UL enterprise was founded as ...
UL-291 "Business Hours" and Level 1 Safes, RAL TL-30 derivatives, and CEN EN 1143-1 - CEN III and CEN IV. ATM manufacturers recommend that a vault be attached to the floor to prevent theft, though there is a record of a theft conducted by tunnelling into an ATM floor.


Software

With the migration to commodity Personal Computer hardware, standard commercial "off-the-shelf" operating systems and programming environments can be used inside of ATMs. Typical platforms previously used in ATM development include RMX or
OS/2 OS/2 (Operating System/2) is a series of computer operating systems, initially created by Microsoft and IBM under the leadership of IBM software designer Ed Iacobucci. As a result of a feud between the two companies over how to position OS/2 r ...
. Today, the vast majority of ATMs worldwide use
Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ...
. In early 2014, 95% of ATMs were running Windows XP. A small number of deployments may still be running older versions of the Windows OS, such as
Windows NT Windows NT is a proprietary graphical operating system produced by Microsoft, the first version of which was released on July 27, 1993. It is a processor-independent, multiprocessing and multi-user operating system. The first version of Win ...
,
Windows CE Windows Embedded Compact, formerly Windows Embedded CE, Windows Powered and Windows CE, is an operating system subfamily developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows Embedded family of products. Unlike Windows Embedded Standard, which is base ...
, or
Windows 2000 Windows 2000 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft and oriented towards businesses. It was the direct successor to Windows NT 4.0, and was released to manufacturing on December 15, 1999, and was offici ...
, even though Microsoft still supports only
Windows 8.1 Windows 8.1 is a release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was released to manufacturing on August 27, 2013, and broadly released for retail sale on October 17, 2013, about a year after the retail release of its pre ...
,
Windows 10 Windows 10 is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It is the direct successor to Windows 8.1, which was released nearly two years earlier. It was released to manufacturing on July 15, 2015, and later to retail on ...
and
Windows 11 Windows 11 is the latest major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system, released in October 2021. It is a free upgrade to its predecessor, Windows 10 (2015), and is available for any Windows 10 devices that meet the new Windows 11 ...
. There is a computer industry security view that general public desktop operating systems(os) have greater risks as operating systems for cash dispensing machines than other types of operating systems like (secure)
real-time operating system A real-time operating system (RTOS) is an operating system (OS) for real-time applications that processes data and events that have critically defined time constraints. An RTOS is distinct from a time-sharing operating system, such as Unix, which m ...
s (RTOS). RISKS Digest has many articles about ATM operating system vulnerabilities.
Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, whi ...
is also finding some reception in the ATM marketplace. An example of this is
Banrisul Banrisul is a Brazilian bank. It is the largest bank of Southern Brazil and operates primarily in the state of Rio Grande do Sul (RS), with a network that serves more than 365 cities. The services, however, are extended to other localities of Braz ...
, the largest bank in the south of
Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...
, which has replaced the
MS-DOS MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few o ...
operating systems in its ATMs with Linux.
Banco do Brasil Banco do Brasil S.A. ( en, Bank of Brazil) is a Brazilian financial services company headquartered in Brasília, Brazil. The oldest bank in Brazil, and among the oldest banks in continuous operation in the world, it was founded by John VI, King ...
is also migrating ATMs to Linux. Indian-based
Vortex Engineering Vortex Engineering is an India-based technology company that makes self-service transaction systems (such as Automated Teller Machine, ATMs) for banks, independent ATM operators and other financial institutions. Vortex also offers products and s ...
is manufacturing ATMs that operate only with Linux. Common application layer transaction protocols, such as
Diebold Diebold Nixdorf is an American multinational financial and retail technology company that specializes in the sale, manufacture, installation and service of self-service transaction systems (such as ATMs and currency processing systems), point ...
91x (911 or 912) and NCR NDC or NDC+ provide
emulation Emulation may refer to: *Emulation (computing), imitation of behavior of a computer or other electronic system with the help of another type of system :*Video game console emulator, software which emulates video game consoles *Gaussian process em ...
of older generations of hardware on newer platforms with incremental extensions made over time to address new capabilities, although companies like NCR continuously improve these protocols issuing newer versions (e.g. NCR's AANDC v3.x.y, where x.y are subversions). Most major ATM manufacturers provide software packages that implement these protocols. Newer protocols such as IFX have yet to find wide acceptance by transaction processors. With the move to a more standardised software base, financial institutions have been increasingly interested in the ability to pick and choose the application programs that drive their equipment. WOSA/XFS, now known as CEN XFS (or simply XFS), provides a common API for accessing and manipulating the various devices of an ATM. J/XFS is a Java implementation of the CEN XFS API. While the perceived benefit of XFS is similar to the Java's "
write once, run anywhere Write once, run anywhere (WORA), or sometimes Write once, run everywhere (WORE), was a 1995 slogan created by Sun Microsystems to illustrate the cross-platform benefits of the Java language. Ideally, this meant that a Java program could be develo ...
" mantra, often different ATM hardware vendors have different interpretations of the XFS standard. The result of these differences in interpretation means that ATM applications typically use a
middleware Middleware is a type of computer software that provides services to software applications beyond those available from the operating system. It can be described as "software glue". Middleware makes it easier for software developers to implement ...
to even out the differences among various platforms. With the onset of Windows operating systems and XFS on ATMs, the software applications have the ability to become more intelligent. This has created a new breed of ATM applications commonly referred to as programmable applications. These types of applications allows for an entirely new host of applications in which the ATM terminal can do more than only communicate with the ATM switch. It is now empowered to connected to other content servers and
video banking Video banking is a term used for performing banking transactions or professional banking consultations via a remote video connection. Video banking can be performed via purpose built banking transaction machines (similar to an Automated teller mach ...
systems. Notable ATM software that operates on XFS platforms include Triton PRISM,
Diebold Diebold Nixdorf is an American multinational financial and retail technology company that specializes in the sale, manufacture, installation and service of self-service transaction systems (such as ATMs and currency processing systems), point ...
Agilis EmPower, NCR APTRA Edge, Absolute Systems AbsoluteINTERACT, KAL Kalignite Software Platform, Phoenix Interactive VISTAatm, Wincor Nixdorf ProTopas, Euronet EFTS and Intertech inter-ATM. With the move of ATMs to industry-standard computing environments, concern has risen about the integrity of the ATM's software stack.


Impact on labor

The number of human
bank teller A bank teller (often abbreviated to simply teller) is an employee of a bank whose responsibilities include the handling of customer cash and negotiable instruments. In some places, this employee is known as a cashier or customer representative. ...
s in the United States increased from approximately 300,000 in 1970 to approximately 600,000 in 2010. Counter-intuitively, a contributing factor may be the introduction of automated teller machines. ATMs let a branch operate with fewer tellers, making it cheaper for banks to open more branches. This likely resulted in more tellers being hired to handle non-automated tasks, but further automation and
online banking Online banking, also known as internet banking, web banking or home banking, is an electronic payment system that enables customers of a bank or other financial institution to conduct a range of financial transactions through the financial ins ...
may reverse this increase.


Security

Security" \n\n\nsecurity.txt is a proposed standard for websites' security information that is meant to allow security researchers to easily report security vulnerabilities. The standard prescribes a text file called \"security.txt\" in the well known locat ...
, as it relates to ATMs, has several dimensions. ATMs also provide a practical demonstration of a number of security systems and concepts operating together and how various security concerns are addressed.


Physical

Early ATM security focused on making the terminals invulnerable to physical attack; they were effectively safes with dispenser mechanisms. A number of attacks resulted, with thieves attempting to steal entire machines by
ram-raiding Ram-raiding is a type of burglary in which a heavy vehicle is driven into the windows or doors of a building, usually a department store or jeweller's shop, to allow the perpetrators to loot it. Overview The term came into widespread use after ...
. Since the late 1990s, criminal groups operating in Japan improved ram-raiding by stealing and using a truck loaded with heavy construction machinery to effectively demolish or uproot an entire ATM and any housing to steal its cash. Another attack method, ''plofkraak'', is to seal all openings of the ATM with
silicone A silicone or polysiloxane is a polymer made up of siloxane (−R2Si−O−SiR2−, where R = organic group). They are typically colorless oils or rubber-like substances. Silicones are used in sealants, adhesives, lubricants, medicine, cookin ...
and fill the vault with a combustible gas or to place an explosive inside, attached, or near the machine. This gas or explosive is ignited and the vault is opened or distorted by the force of the resulting explosion and the criminals can break in. This type of theft has occurred in the
Netherlands ) , anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau") , image_map = , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands , established_title = Before independence , established_date = Spanish Netherl ...
,
Belgium Belgium, ; french: Belgique ; german: Belgien officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. The country is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeast, France to ...
,
France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...
,
Denmark ) , song = ( en, "King Christian stood by the lofty mast") , song_type = National and royal anthem , image_map = EU-Denmark.svg , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Kingdom of Denmark , establish ...
,
Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwee ...
,
Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands. With an area of , Australia is the largest country by ...
, and the
United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and ...
. These types of attacks can be prevented by a number of gas explosion prevention devices also known as gas suppression system. These systems use explosive gas detection sensor to detect explosive gas and to neutralise it by releasing a special explosion suppression chemical which changes the composition of the explosive gas and renders it ineffective. Several attacks in the UK (at least one of which was successful) have involved digging a concealed tunnel under the ATM and cutting through the reinforced base to remove the money. Modern ATM physical security, per other modern money-handling security, concentrates on denying the use of the money inside the machine to a thief, by using different types of Intelligent Banknote Neutralisation Systems. A common method is to simply rob the staff filling the machine with money. To avoid this, the schedule for filling them is kept secret, varying and random. The money is often kept in cassettes, which will dye the money if incorrectly opened.


Transactional secrecy and integrity

The security of ATM transactions relies mostly on the integrity of the secure
cryptoprocessor A secure cryptoprocessor is a dedicated System-on-a-chip, computer-on-a-chip or microprocessor for carrying out cryptographic operations, embedded in a packaging with multiple physical security measures, which give it a degree of tamper resistan ...
: the ATM often uses general commodity components that sometimes are not considered to be " trusted systems". Encryption of personal information, required by law in many jurisdictions, is used to prevent fraud. Sensitive data in ATM transactions are usually
encrypted In cryptography, encryption is the process of encoding information. This process converts the original representation of the information, known as plaintext, into an alternative form known as ciphertext. Ideally, only authorized parties can deci ...
with
DES Des is a masculine given name, mostly a short form (hypocorism) of Desmond. People named Des include: People * Des Buckingham, English football manager * Des Corcoran, (1928–2004), Australian politician * Des Dillon (disambiguation), sever ...
, but transaction processors now usually require the use of
Triple DES In cryptography, Triple DES (3DES or TDES), officially the Triple Data Encryption Algorithm (TDEA or Triple DEA), is a symmetric-key block cipher, which applies the DES cipher algorithm three times to each data block. The Data Encryption Standa ...
. Remote Key Loading techniques may be used to ensure the secrecy of the initialisation of the encryption keys in the ATM.
Message Authentication Code In cryptography, a message authentication code (MAC), sometimes known as a ''tag'', is a short piece of information used for authenticating a message. In other words, to confirm that the message came from the stated sender (its authenticity) and ...
(MAC) or Partial MAC may also be used to ensure messages have not been tampered with while in transit between the ATM and the financial network.


Customer identity integrity

There have also been a number of incidents of fraud by
Man-in-the-middle attack In cryptography and computer security, a man-in-the-middle, monster-in-the-middle, machine-in-the-middle, monkey-in-the-middle, meddler-in-the-middle, manipulator-in-the-middle (MITM), person-in-the-middle (PITM) or adversary-in-the-middle (AiTM) ...
s, where criminals have attached fake keypads or card readers to existing machines. These have then been used to record customers' PINs and bank card information in order to gain unauthorised access to their accounts. Various ATM manufacturers have put in place countermeasures to protect the equipment they manufacture from these threats. Alternative methods to verify cardholder identities have been tested and deployed in some countries, such as finger and palm vein patterns,
iris Iris most often refers to: *Iris (anatomy), part of the eye *Iris (mythology), a Greek goddess * ''Iris'' (plant), a genus of flowering plants * Iris (color), an ambiguous color term Iris or IRIS may also refer to: Arts and media Fictional ent ...
, and facial recognition technologies. Cheaper mass-produced equipment has been developed and is being installed in machines globally that detect the presence of foreign objects on the front of ATMs, current tests have shown 99% detection success for all types of skimming devices.


Device operation integrity

Openings on the customer side of ATMs are often covered by mechanical shutters to prevent tampering with the mechanisms when they are not in use. Alarm sensors are placed inside ATMs and their servicing areas to alert their operators when doors have been opened by unauthorised personnel. To protect against hackers, ATMs have a built-in firewall. Once the firewall has detected malicious attempts to break into the machine remotely, the firewall locks down the machine. Rules are usually set by the government or ATM operating body that dictate what happens when integrity systems fail. Depending on the jurisdiction, a bank may or may not be liable when an attempt is made to dispense a customer's money from an ATM and the money either gets outside of the ATM's vault, or was exposed in a non-secure fashion, or they are unable to determine the state of the money after a failed transaction. Customers often commented that it is difficult to recover money lost in this way, but this is often complicated by the policies regarding suspicious activities typical of the criminal element.


Customer security

In some countries, multiple
security camera A closed-circuit television camera can produce images or recordings for surveillance or other private purposes. Cameras can be either video cameras, or digital stills cameras. Walter Bruch was the inventor of the CCTV camera. The main purpose o ...
s and
security guard A security guard (also known as a security inspector, security officer, or protective agent) is a person employed by a government or private party to protect the employing party's assets (property, people, equipment, money, etc.) from a variety ...
s are a common feature. In the
United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...
, The
New York State New York, officially the State of New York, is a state in the Northeastern United States. It is often called New York State to distinguish it from its largest city, New York City. With a total area of , New York is the 27th-largest U.S. sta ...
Comptroller's Office has advised the New York State Department of Banking to have more thorough safety inspections of ATMs in high crime areas. Consultants of ATM operators assert that the issue of customer security should have more focus by the banking industry; it has been suggested that efforts are now more concentrated on the preventive measure of deterrent legislation than on the problem of ongoing forced withdrawals. At least as far back as 30 July 1986, consultants of the industry have advised for the adoption of an emergency PIN system for ATMs, where the user is able to send a
silent alarm ''Silent Alarm'' is the debut studio album by English rock band Bloc Party. Recorded in Copenhagen and London in mid-2004 with Paul Epworth as producer, it was released on 2 February 2005, by Wichita Recordings. The album peaked at number th ...
in response to a threat. Legislative efforts to require an emergency PIN system have appeared in
Illinois Illinois ( ) is a state in the Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Louis. Other smaller metropolitan areas include, Peoria and Rock ...
,
Kansas Kansas () is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern United States. Its Capital city, capital is Topeka, Kansas, Topeka, and its largest city is Wichita, Kansas, Wichita. Kansas is a landlocked state bordered by Nebras ...
and
Georgia Georgia most commonly refers to: * Georgia (country), a country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia * Georgia (U.S. state), a state in the Southeast United States Georgia may also refer to: Places Historical states and entities * Related to the ...
, but none has succeeded yet. In January 2009, Senate Bill 1355 was proposed in the Illinois Senate that revisits the issue of the reverse emergency PIN system. The bill is again supported by the police and opposed by the banking lobby. In 1998, three towns outside Cleveland, Ohio, in response to an ATM crime wave, adopted legislation requiring that an
emergency telephone number Most public switched telephone networks have a single emergency telephone number (sometimes known as the universal emergency telephone number or the emergency services number) that allows a caller to contact local emergency services for assis ...
switch be installed at all outdoor ATMs within their jurisdiction. In the wake of a homicide in Sharon Hill, Pennsylvania, the city council passed an ATM security bill as well. In China and elsewhere, many efforts to promote security have been made. On-premises ATMs are often located inside the bank's lobby, which may be accessible 24 hours a day. These lobbies have extensive security camera coverage, a courtesy telephone for consulting with the bank staff, and a security guard on the premises. Bank lobbies that are not guarded 24 hours a day may also have secure doors that can only be opened from outside by swiping the bank card against a wall-mounted scanner, allowing the bank to identify which card enters the building. Most ATMs will also display on-screen safety warnings and may also be fitted with convex mirrors above the display allowing the user to see what is happening behind them. As of 2013, the only claim available about the extent of ATM-connected homicides is that they range from 500 to 1,000 per year in the US, covering only cases where the victim had an ATM card and the card was used by the killer after the known time of death.


Jackpotting

The term is used to describe one method criminals utilize to steal money from an ATM. The thieves gain physical access through a small hole drilled in the machine. They disconnect the existing hard drive and connect an external drive using an industrial endoscope. They then depress an internal button that reboots the device so that it is now under the control of the external drive. They can then have the ATM dispense all of its cash.


Encryption

In recent years, many ATMs also encrypt the hard disk. This means that actually creating the software for
jackpotting An automated teller machine (ATM) or cash machine (in British English) is an electronic telecommunications device that enables customers of financial institutions to perform financial transactions, such as cash withdrawals, deposits, fund ...
is more difficult, and provides more security for the ATM.


Uses

ATMs were originally developed as cash dispensers, and have evolved to provide many other bank-related functions: * Paying routine bills, fees, and taxes (utilities, phone bills, social security, legal fees, income taxes, etc.) * Printing or ordering
bank statement A bank statement is an official summary of financial transactions occurring within a given period for each bank account held by a person or business with a financial institution. Such statements are prepared by the financial institution, are ...
s * Updating
passbook A passbook or bankbook is a paper book used to record bank or building society transactions on a deposit account. Traditionally, a passbook was used for accounts with a low transaction volume, such as savings accounts. A bank teller or postma ...
s *
Cash advance A credit card is a payment card issued to users (cardholders) to enable the cardholder to pay a merchant for goods and services based on the cardholder's accrued debt (i.e., promise to the card issuer to pay them for the amounts plus the ot ...
s * Cheque Processing Module * Paying (in full or partially) the credit balance on a card linked to a specific current account. * Transferring money between linked accounts (such as transferring between accounts) * Deposit currency recognition, acceptance, and recycling In some countries, especially those which benefit from a fully integrated cross-bank network (e.g.:
Multibanco Multibanco is a portuguese interbank network. It is the largest interbank network in Portugal owned and operated by SIBS (Sociedade Interbancária de Serviços S.A.), that links the ATMs of 27 banks in Portugal, totaling 12,700 machines as of Dece ...
in Portugal), ATMs include many functions that are not directly related to the management of one's own bank account, such as: * Loading monetary value into
stored-value card A stored-value card (SVC) is a payment card with a monetary value stored on the card itself, not in an external account maintained by a financial institution. This means no network access is required by the payment collection terminals as funds ...
s * Adding pre-paid
cell phone A mobile phone, cellular phone, cell phone, cellphone, handphone, hand phone or pocket phone, sometimes shortened to simply mobile, cell, or just phone, is a portable telephone that can make and receive telephone call, calls over a radio freq ...
/
mobile phone A mobile phone, cellular phone, cell phone, cellphone, handphone, hand phone or pocket phone, sometimes shortened to simply mobile, cell, or just phone, is a portable telephone that can make and receive calls over a radio frequency link whi ...
credit. * Purchasing ** Concert tickets **
Gold Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au (from la, aurum) and atomic number 79. This makes it one of the higher atomic number elements that occur naturally. It is a bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile ...
**
Lottery A lottery is a form of gambling that involves the drawing of numbers at random for a prize. Some governments outlaw lotteries, while others endorse it to the extent of organizing a national or state lottery. It is common to find some degree of ...
tickets ** Movie tickets **
Postage stamp A postage stamp is a small piece of paper issued by a post office, postal administration, or other authorized vendors to customers who pay postage (the cost involved in moving, insuring, or registering mail), who then affix the stamp to the f ...
s. ** Train tickets **
Shopping mall A shopping mall (or simply mall) is a North American term for a large indoor shopping center, usually Anchor tenant, anchored by department stores. The term "mall" originally meant pedestrian zone, a pedestrian promenade with shops along it (that ...
gift certificate A gift card also known as gift certificate in North America, or gift voucher or gift token in the UK is a prepaid stored-value money card, usually issued by a retailer or bank, to be used as an alternative to cash for purchases within a parti ...
s. * Donating to charities Increasingly, banks are seeking to use the ATM as a sales device to deliver pre approved loans and targeted advertising using products such as ITM (the Intelligent Teller Machine) from Aptra Relate from NCR. ATMs can also act as an advertising channel for other companies.* However, several different ATM technologies have not yet reached worldwide acceptance, such as: *
Videoconferencing Videotelephony, also known as videoconferencing and video teleconferencing, is the two-way or multipoint reception and transmission of audio signal, audio and video signals by people in different locations for Real-time, real time communication. ...
with human tellers, known as video tellers *
Biometrics Biometrics are body measurements and calculations related to human characteristics. Biometric authentication (or realistic authentication) is used in computer science as a form of identification and access control. It is also used to identify i ...
, where authorization of transactions is based on the scanning of a customer's fingerprint, iris, face, etc. * Cheque/cash Acceptance, where the machine accepts and recognises cheques and/or currency without using envelopes Expected to grow in importance in the US through
Check 21 The Check Clearing for the 21st Century Act (or Check 21 Act) is a United States federal law, , that was enacted on October 28, 2003 by the 108th U.S. Congress. The Check 21 Act took effect one year later on October 28, 2004. The law allows the ...
legislation. * Bar code scanning * On-demand printing of "items of value" (such as movie tickets,
traveler's cheque A traveller's cheque is a medium of exchange that can be used in place of hard currency. They can be denominated in one of a number of major world currencies and are preprinted, fixed-amount cheques designed to allow the person signing it to ma ...
s, etc.) * Dispensing additional media (such as phone cards) * Co-ordination of ATMs with mobile phones * Integration with non-banking equipment * Games and promotional features * CRM through the ATM Videoconferencing teller machines are currently referred to as Interactive Teller Machines. Benton Smith writes in the Idaho Business Review, "The software that allows interactive teller machines to function was created by a Salt Lake City-based company called uGenius, a producer of video banking software. NCR, a leading manufacturer of ATMs, acquired uGenius in 2013 and married its own ATM hardware with uGenius' video software." *Pharmacy dispensing units


Reliability

Before an ATM is placed in a public place, it typically has undergone extensive testing with both
test money Test money (or test notes, test bills, funny money, Monopoly money) are a part of the test apparatus that are often used with currency handling equipment, such as automatic teller machines. While it is often desirable to use actual banknotes or c ...
and the backend computer systems that allow it to perform transactions. Banking customers also have come to expect high reliability in their ATMs, which provides incentives to ATM providers to minimise machine and network failures. Financial consequences of incorrect machine operation also provide high degrees of incentive to minimise malfunctions. ATMs and the supporting electronic financial networks are generally very reliable, with industry benchmarks typically producing 98.25% customer availability for ATMs and up to 99.999% availability for host systems that manage the networks of ATMs. If ATM networks do go out of service, customers could be left without the ability to make transactions until the beginning of their bank's next time of opening hours. This said, not all errors are to the detriment of customers; there have been cases of machines giving out money without debiting the account, or giving out higher value notes as a result of incorrect denomination of
banknote A banknote—also called a bill (North American English), paper money, or simply a note—is a type of negotiable instrument, negotiable promissory note, made by a bank or other licensed authority, payable to the bearer on demand. Banknotes w ...
being loaded in the money cassettes. The result of receiving too much money may be influenced by the card holder agreement in place between the customer and the bank. Errors that can occur may be
mechanical Mechanical may refer to: Machine * Machine (mechanical), a system of mechanisms that shape the actuator input to achieve a specific application of output forces and movement * Mechanical calculator, a device used to perform the basic operations ...
(such as card transport mechanisms; keypads;
hard disk failure A hard disk drive failure occurs when a hard disk drive malfunctions and the stored information cannot be accessed with a properly configured computer. A hard disk failure may occur in the course of normal operation, or due to an external factor ...
s; envelope deposit mechanisms);
software Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. At the lowest programming level, executable code consist ...
(such as
operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ef ...
;
device driver In computing, a device driver is a computer program that operates or controls a particular type of device that is attached to a computer or automaton. A driver provides a software interface to hardware devices, enabling operating systems and o ...
;
application Application may refer to: Mathematics and computing * Application software, computer software designed to help the user to perform specific tasks ** Application layer, an abstraction layer that specifies protocols and interface methods used in a c ...
);
communications Communication (from la, communicare, meaning "to share" or "to be in relation with") is usually defined as the transmission of information. The term may also refer to the message communicated through such transmissions or the field of inquir ...
; or purely down to operator error. To aid in reliability, some ATMs print each transaction to a roll-paper journal that is stored inside the ATM, which allows its users and the related financial institutions to settle things based on the records in the journal in case there is a dispute. In some cases, transactions are posted to an electronic journal to remove the cost of supplying journal paper to the ATM and for more convenient searching of data. Improper money checking can cause the possibility of a customer receiving
counterfeit To counterfeit means to imitate something authentic, with the intent to steal, destroy, or replace the original, for use in illegal transactions, or otherwise to deceive individuals into believing that the fake is of equal or greater value tha ...
banknotes from an ATM. While bank personnel are generally trained better at spotting and removing counterfeit cash, the resulting ATM money supplies used by banks provide no guarantee for proper banknotes, as the Federal Criminal Police Office of Germany has confirmed that there are regularly incidents of false banknotes having been dispensed through ATMs. Some ATMs may be stocked and wholly owned by outside companies, which can further complicate this problem. Bill validation technology can be used by ATM providers to help ensure the authenticity of the cash before it is stocked in the machine; those with cash recycling capabilities include this capability. In India, whenever a transaction fails with an ATM due to network or technical issues and if the amount does not get dispensed in spite of the account being debited then the banks are supposed to return the debited amount to the customer within seven working days from the day of receipt of a complaint. Banks are also liable to pay the late fees in case of delay in repayment of funds post seven days.


Fraud

As with any device containing objects of value, ATMs and the systems they depend on to function are the targets of fraud. Fraud against ATMs and people's attempts to use them takes several forms. The first known instance of a fake ATM was installed at a shopping mall in
Manchester, Connecticut Manchester is a town in Hartford County, Connecticut, United States. As of the 2020 census, the town had a total population of 59,713. The urban center of the town is the Manchester census-designated place, with a population of 36,379 at the 20 ...
, in 1993. By modifying the inner workings of a
Fujitsu is a Japanese multinational information and communications technology equipment and services corporation, established in 1935 and headquartered in Tokyo. Fujitsu is the world's sixth-largest IT services provider by annual revenue, and the la ...
model 7020 ATM, a criminal gang known as the Bucklands Boys stole information from cards inserted into the machine by customers.
WAVY-TV WAVY-TV (channel 10) is a television station licensed to Portsmouth, Virginia, United States, serving the Hampton Roads area as an affiliate of NBC. It is owned by Nexstar Media Group alongside Virginia Beach–licensed Fox affiliate WVBT (chann ...
reported an incident in Virginia Beach in September 2006 where a hacker, who had probably obtained a factory-default administrator password for a filling station's white-label ATM, caused the unit to assume it was loaded with US$5 bills instead of $20s, enabling himself—and many subsequent customers—to walk away with four times the money withdrawn from their accounts. This type of scam was featured on the TV series ''
The Real Hustle ''The Real Hustle'' is a BBC British television series created by Objective Productions, Alexis Conran and R. Paul Wilson for BBC Three. The show demonstrates confidence and magic tricks, distraction scams and proposition bets performed on ...
''. ATM behaviour can change during what is called "stand-in" time, where the bank's cash dispensing network is unable to access databases that contain account information (possibly for database maintenance). In order to give customers access to cash, customers may be allowed to withdraw cash up to a certain amount that may be less than their usual daily withdrawal limit, but may still exceed the amount of available money in their accounts, which could result in fraud if the customers intentionally withdraw more money than they had in their accounts.


Card fraud

In an attempt to prevent criminals from shoulder surfing the customer's
personal identification number A personal identification number (PIN), or sometimes redundantly a PIN number or PIN code, is a numeric (sometimes alpha-numeric) passcode used in the process of authenticating a user accessing a system. The PIN has been the key to facilitati ...
(PIN), some banks draw privacy areas on the floor. For a low-tech form of fraud, the easiest is to simply steal a customer's card along with its PIN. A later variant of this approach is to trap the card inside of the ATM's card reader with a device often referred to as a
Lebanese loop A Lebanese loop is a device used to commit fraud and identity theft by exploiting automated teller machines (ATMs). In its simplest form, it is a strip or sleeve of metal or plastic which blocks the ATM's card slot, causing any inserted card to be ...
. When the customer gets frustrated by not getting the card back and walks away from the machine, the criminal is able to remove the card and withdraw cash from the customer's account, using the card and its PIN. This type of fraud has spread globally. Although somewhat replaced in terms of volume by skimming incidents, a re-emergence of card trapping has been noticed in regions such as Europe, where EMV chip and PIN cards have increased in circulation. Another simple form of fraud involves attempting to get the customer's bank to issue a new card and its PIN and stealing them from their mail. By contrast, a newer high-tech method of operating, sometimes called card skimming or card cloning, involves the installation of a magnetic card reader over the real ATM's card slot and the use of a wireless surveillance camera or a modified digital camera or a false PIN keypad to observe the user's PIN. Card data is then cloned into a duplicate card and the criminal attempts a standard cash withdrawal. The availability of low-cost commodity wireless cameras, keypads, card readers, and card writers has made it a relatively simple form of fraud, with comparatively low risk to the fraudsters. In an attempt to stop these practices, countermeasures against card cloning have been developed by the banking industry, in particular by the use of
smart card A smart card, chip card, or integrated circuit card (ICC or IC card) is a physical electronic authentication device, used to control access to a resource. It is typically a plastic credit card-sized card with an embedded integrated circuit (IC) c ...
s which cannot easily be copied or spoofed by unauthenticated devices, and by attempting to make the outside of their ATMs tamper evident. Older chip-card security systems include the French
Carte Bleue ''Carte Bleue'' ( en, Blue Card) was a major debit card payment system operating in France. Unlike Visa Electron or Maestro debit cards, Carte Bleue transactions worked without requiring authorization from the cardholder's bank. In many situa ...
,
Visa Cash Visa Cash is a smart card electronic cash system, implemented as a stored-value card owned by Visa. Trialled in various locations worldwide (including Leeds, UK in 1997), the system works via a 'chip' embedded in a bank card, and looks similar to ...
, Mondex,
Blue from American Express American Express Company (Amex) is an American multinational corporation, multinational corporation specialized in payment card industry, payment card services headquartered at 200 Vesey Street in the Battery Park City neighborhood of Lower Man ...
and EMV '96 or EMV 3.11. The most actively developed form of smart card security in the industry today is known as EMV 2000 or EMV 4.x. EMV is widely used in the UK (
Chip and PIN Chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) is a type of immunoprecipitation experimental technique used to investigate the interaction between proteins and DNA in the cell. It aims to determine whether specific proteins are associated with specific gen ...
) and other parts of Europe, but when it is not available in a specific area, ATMs must fall back to using the easy–to–copy magnetic stripe to perform transactions. This fallback behaviour can be exploited. However, the fallback option has been removed on the ATMs of some UK banks, meaning if the chip is not read, the transaction will be declined. Card cloning and skimming can be detected by the implementation of magnetic card reader heads and firmware that can read a signature embedded in all magnetic stripes during the card production process. This signature, known as a "MagnePrint" or "BluPrint", can be used in conjunction with common two-factor authentication schemes used in ATM, debit/retail point-of-sale and prepaid card applications. The concept and various methods of copying the contents of an ATM card's magnetic stripe onto a duplicate card to access other people's financial information were well known in the hacking communities by late 1990. In 1996, Andrew Stone, a computer security consultant from Hampshire in the UK, was convicted of stealing more than £1 million by pointing high-definition video cameras at ATMs from a considerable distance and recording the card numbers, expiry dates, etc. from the embossed detail on the ATM cards along with video footage of the PINs being entered. After getting all the information from the videotapes, he was able to produce clone cards which not only allowed him to withdraw the full daily limit for each account, but also allowed him to sidestep withdrawal limits by using multiple copied cards. In court, it was shown that he could withdraw as much as £10,000 per hour by using this method. Stone was sentenced to five years and six months in prison.


Related devices

A talking ATM is a type of ATM that provides audible instructions so that people who cannot read a screen can independently use the machine, therefore effectively eliminating the need for assistance from an external, potentially malevolent source. All audible information is delivered privately through a standard headphone jack on the face of the machine. Alternatively, some banks such as the
Nordea Nordea Bank Abp, commonly referred to as Nordea, is a European financial services group operating in northern Europe and based in Helsinki, Finland. The name is a blend of the words "Nordic" and "idea". The bank is the result of the successive m ...
and
Swedbank Swedbank AB () is a Nordic- Baltic banking group based in Stockholm, Sweden, offering retail banking, asset management, financial, and other services. In 2019 Swedbank had 900,000 private and 130,000 corporate clients and a 60% market share o ...
use a built-in external speaker which may be invoked by pressing the talk button on the keypad. Information is delivered to the customer either through pre-recorded
sound In physics, sound is a vibration that propagates as an acoustic wave, through a transmission medium such as a gas, liquid or solid. In human physiology and psychology, sound is the ''reception'' of such waves and their ''perception'' by ...
files or via text-to-speech
speech synthesis Speech synthesis is the artificial production of human speech. A computer system used for this purpose is called a speech synthesizer, and can be implemented in software or hardware products. A text-to-speech (TTS) system converts normal langua ...
. A postal
interactive kiosk An interactive kiosk is a computer terminal featuring specialized hardware and software that provides access to information and applications for communication, commerce, entertainment, or education. By 2010, the largest bill pay kiosk networ ...
may share many components of an ATM (including a vault), but it only dispenses items related to postage. A scrip cash dispenser may have many components in common with an ATM, but it lacks the ability to dispense physical cash and consequently requires no vault. Instead, the customer requests a withdrawal transaction from the machine, which prints a receipt or
scrip A scrip (or ''chit'' in India) is any substitute for legal tender. It is often a form of credit. Scrips have been created and used for a variety of reasons, including exploitive payment of employees under truck systems; or for use in local co ...
. The customer then takes this receipt to a nearby sales clerk, who then exchanges it for cash from the till. A teller assist unit (TAU) is distinct in that it is designed to be operated solely by trained personnel and not by the general public, does integrate directly into interbank networks, and usually is controlled by a computer that is not directly integrated into the overall construction of the unit. A Web ATM is an online interface for ATM card banking that uses a smart card reader. All the usual ATM functions are available, except for withdrawing cash. Most banks in
Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the no ...
provide these online services.


See also

* ATM Industry Association (ATMIA) *
Automated cash handling Automated cash handling is the process of dispensing, counting and tracking cash in a bank, retail, check cashing, payday loan / advance, casino or other business environment through specially designed hardware and software for the purposes of l ...
*
Banknote counter A banknote counter or bill counter is a device designed primarily to accurately count a quantity of banknotes. Additionally, a banknote counter may sort banknotes into batches and check for damaged or counterfeit notes. History The first automa ...
* Bitcoin ATM *
Cash register A cash register, sometimes called a till or automated money handling system, is a mechanical or electronic device for registering and calculating transactions at a point of sale. It is usually attached to a drawer for storing cash and other ...
*
EFTPOS Electronic funds transfer at point of sale (EFTPOS; ) is an electronic payment system involving electronic funds transfers based on the use of payment cards, such as debit or credit cards, at payment terminals located at points of sale. EFTPOS ...
*
Electronic funds transfer Electronic funds transfer (EFT) is the electronic transfer of money from one bank account to another, either within a single financial institution or across multiple institutions, via computer-based systems, without the direct intervention of b ...
* Financial cryptography *
Key management Key management refers to management of cryptographic keys in a cryptosystem. This includes dealing with the generation, exchange, storage, use, crypto-shredding (destruction) and replacement of keys. It includes cryptographic protocol design, ...
*
Payroll A payroll is the list of employees of some company that is entitled to receive payments as well as other work benefits and the amounts that each should receive. Along with the amounts that each employee should receive for time worked or tasks pe ...
*
Phantom withdrawal A phantom withdrawal is a cash withdrawal from an automatic teller machine where money has been withdrawn from an account, and neither the customer nor the bank admit liability. If the banks are unable to find any error on their side, they conclu ...
*
RAS syndrome RAS syndrome (where "RAS" stands for "redundant acronym syndrome", making the phrase "RAS syndrome" homological) is the redundant use of one or more of the words that make up an acronym (or other initialism) in conjunction with the abbreviated f ...
*
Self service Self-service is the practice of serving oneself, usually when making purchases. Aside from Automated Teller Machines, which are not limited to banks, and customer-operated supermarket check-out, labor-saving of which has been described as self- ...
*
Teller system A teller system is the integrated hardware and software used for retail or wholesale banking transactions, most systems communicate with a core banking system or mainframe computer, mainframe over a secured network. The hardware may include a comp ...
*
Verification and validation Verification and validation (also abbreviated as V&V) are independent procedures that are used together for checking that a product, service, or system meets requirements and specifications and that it fulfills its intended purpose. These are ...


References


Further reading

* Ali, Peter Ifeanyichukwu. "Impact of automated teller machine on banking services delivery in Nigeria: a stakeholder analysis." ''Brazilian Journal of Education, Technology and Society'' 9.1 (2016): 64–72
online
* Bátiz-Lazo, Bernardo. ''Cash and Dash: How ATMs and Computers Changed Banking'' (Oxford University Press, 2018)
online review
* Batiz-Lazo, Bernardo. "Emergence and evolution of ATM networks in the UK, 1967–2000." ''Business History'' 51.1 (2009): 1-27
online
* Batiz-Lazo, Bernardo, and Gustavo del Angel. ''The Dawn of the Plastic Jungle: The Introduction of the Credit Card in Europe and North America, 1950-1975'' (Hoover Institution, 2016)

* Bessen, J. ''Learning by Doing: The Real Connection between Innovation, Wages, and Wealth'' (Yale UP, 2015) * Hota, Jyotiranjan, Saboohi Nasim, and Sasmita Mishra. "Drivers and Barriers to Adoption of Multivendor ATM Technology in India: Synthesis of Three Empirical Studies." ''Journal of Technology Management for Growing Economies'' 9.1 (2018): 89-102
online
* McDysan, David E., and Darren L. Spohn. ''ATM theory and applications'' (McGraw-Hill Professional, 1998). * Mkpojiogu, Emmanuel OC, and A. Asuquo. "The user experience of ATM users in Nigeria: a systematic review of empirical papers." ''Journal of Research in National Development'' (2018)
online


Primary sources




External links



An account of US cash machine history; By Ellen Florian,
Fortune Fortune may refer to: General * Fortuna or Fortune, the Roman goddess of luck * Luck * Wealth * Fortune, a prediction made in fortune-telling * Fortune, in a fortune cookie Arts and entertainment Film and television * ''The Fortune'' (1931 film) ...
.com *
World Map and Chart of Automated Teller Machines per 100,000 Adults
by Lebanese-economy-forum, World Bank data {{Authority control Computer-related introductions in 1967 Banking equipment Banking technology Embedded systems American inventions English inventions Payment systems Articles containing video clips 1967 in economics 20th-century inventions