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Automated teller machine

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An automated teller machine ( ATM ) or cash machine (British English) is an electronic telecommunications device that enables customers of financial institutions to perform financial transactions, such as cash withdrawals, deposits, funds transfers, 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 , cashline 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 . Many ATMs have a sign above them indicating the name of the bank or organisation that o...

History

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The idea of out-of-hours cash distribution developed from bankers' needs in Japan, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. 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. Adrian Ashfield invented the basic idea of a card combining the key and user's identity in February 1962. This was granted UK Patent 959,713 for "Access Controller" in June 1964 and assigned to W. S. Atkins & Partners who employed Ashfield. He was paid ten shillings for this, the standard sum for all patents. It was originally intended to dispense petrol but the patent covered all uses. citation needed In the US patent record, Luther George Simjian has been credited with developing a "prior art device". Specifically his 132nd patent (US3079603), which was first filed on 30 June 1960 (and granted 26 Februar...

Location

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ATMs can be placed at any location but are most often placed near or inside banks, shopping centers/malls, airports, railway stations, metro stations, grocery stores, petrol/gas stations, restaurants, and other locations. ATMs are also found on cruise ships and on some US Navy 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, citation needed banks may have drive-thru lanes providing access to ATMs using an automobile. In recent times, countries like India and some countries in Africa are installing ATMs in rural areas, which are solar powered. The world's highest ATM is...

Financial networks

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This section needs additional citations for verification . Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources:  "Automated teller machine" – news  · newspapers  · books  · scholar  · JSTOR ( June 2018 ) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) Most ATMs are connected to interbank networks, 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, PULSE, PLUS, Cirrus, AFFN, Interac, Interswitch, STAR, LINK, MegaLink, and BancNet. ATMs rely on authorization of a financial transaction by the card issuer or other authorizing institution on a communications network. This is often performed through an ISO 8583 messaging system. Many banks charge ATM usage fees. In some cases, ...

Global use

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There are no hard international or government-compiled numbers totaling the complete number of ATMs in use worldwide. Estimates developed by ATMIA 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, due to 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 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

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An ATM is typically made up of the following devices: CPU (to control the user interface and transaction devices) Magnetic or chip card reader (to identify the customer) a PIN pad for accepting and encrypting personal identification number EPP4 (similar in layout to a touch tone or calculator keypad), manufactured as part of a secure enclosure Secure cryptoprocessor, generally within a secure enclosure Display (used by the customer for performing the transaction) Function key buttons (usually close to the display) or a touchscreen (used to select the various aspects of the transaction) Record printer (to provide the customer with a record of the transaction) Vault (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–like architectures, ATMs have moved away from custom hardware architectures using microcontrollers or a...

Software

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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. Today, the vast majority of ATMs worldwide use a Microsoft Windows operating system, primarily Windows XP Professional or Windows XP Embedded. citation needed needs update 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 CE, or Windows 2000, even though Microsoft still supports only Windows 8 and Windows 10. 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 systems (RTOS). RISKS Digest has many articles about ATM operating system vulnerabil...

Impact on labor

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The number of human bank tellers 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 may reverse this increase.

Security

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Security, 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 edit 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. 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 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 th...

Uses

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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 statements Updating passbooks Cash advances 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 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 cards Adding pre-paid cell phone / mobile phone credit. Purchasing Concert tickets Gold Lottery tickets Movie tickets Postage stamps. Train ticket...

Reliability

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Before an ATM is placed in a public place, it typically has undergone extensive testing with both test money 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 d...

Fraud

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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 in 1993. By modifying the inner workings of a Fujitsu model 7020 ATM, a criminal gang known as the Bucklands Boys stole information from cards inserted into the machine by customers. WAVY-TV 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 . ATM behaviour can change during what is called "stand-in" t...

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 and Swedbank 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 files or via text-to-speech speech synthesis. A postal interactive kiosk 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, whi...

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