Page 20 - GS190801

Views

Banking on ATMs and POS debit (Most bank ATMs offer a slate of banking services.) In
1996, Visa (owner of the PLUS national ATM network) and
Visa and Mastercard entered the POS debit space in a big Mastercard (owner of Cirrus) lifted prohibitions on sur-
way beginning in the 1990s, convincing banks to issue charging ATM transactions, and soon independent ATM
ATM debit cards that also carried the national card brand deployments exploded.
logos. And within about 10 years, debit cards were being
used to ring up more purchases than credit cards. A 2009 In 1996 there were just under 140,000 ATMs in the United
article in the Wall Street Journal described the move this States., with most owned by financial institutions, accord-
way: "The urge not to splurge by thrift-conscious consum- ing to a report at the time by the Federal Reserve Bank
ers is giving the debit-card revolution a new push." of St. Louis. By 2018 there were more than 470,000 ATMs
deployed domestically, with most owned and operated by
The Federal Reserve, which keeps tabs on non cash pay- ISOs, according to a study published by the National ATM
ments in the United States., reported that in 2017 there Council.
were 82.6 billion debit card payments worth a combined
value of $2.88 trillion, and 13.1 billion prepaid debit card The early test labs for ATM surcharging were casinos and
payments totaling $300 billion. That same year, Ameri- airports. Today, better than two-thirds of all ATMs in the
cans made 37.7 billion payments totaling $3.32 trillion us- nation are in retail locations, with many deployed by ISOs
ing general purpose credit cards, according to the Fed. in rural communities and inner city neighborhoods that
banks ignore, NAC reported. From a lone terminal in New
While financial institutions achieved efficiency gains by York City to 470,000-plus ATMs nationwide in 50 years –
shifting some branch work to ATMs, technology deploy- that's pretty remarkable growth. Clearly, the changes in
ments have never been a draw for most banks and credit banking and payments ushered in by ATMs have been re-
unions. So just as they did a decade earlier, financial in- markable, too.
stitutions began offloading that work to independent
sales organizations. Soon ISOs began deploying their own
branded ATMs, primarily as cash dispensers, as well. Patti Murphy is senior editor at The Green Sheet and president of
ProScribes Inc. Follow her on Twitter @GS_PayMaven