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 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 tickets
    • Shopping mall gift certificates.
  • 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 with human tellers, known as video tellers
  • Biometrics, 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 legislation.
  • Bar code scanning
  • On-demand printing of "items of value" (such as movie tickets, traveler's cheques, 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, in the Idaho Business Review writes "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

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