Reprinted with permission from ATM&Debit News, a weekly electronic newsletter based in Chicago. To subscribe, call 212-631-9780 or go to this Web site.

There was a time when the ATM and movie industries seemed destined to be intertwined. Several leading ATM deployers signed deals to install hundreds of ATMs in stores operated by major video movie-rental chains. Financial institutions and independent sales organizations also piloted movie trailers on souped-up ATM monitors, and other deployers sought to sell movie tickets on ATMs.

The business proposition failed for video-rental ATMs because transaction volumes were extremely low, and ATMs in video stores were largely abandoned. Few consumers, it seems, needed extra cash to pay for a $2 or $3 video rental. And, while industry observers agree that the movie trailers were visually appealing, the cost to deliver them far outweighed the advertising revenue the trailers produced.

Selling movie tickets on ATMs, however, still seems viable. The largest movie-screen owner in the U.S., Knoxville, Tenn.-based Regal Entertainment Group Inc., which operates 6,119 screens, plans to install 300 ATM ticket dispensers by 2004 in its theaters and may install many more if customers find them convenient, says J.E. Henry, Regal senior vice president.

Regal owns the United Artists and Edwards Theaters chains. The ATM ticket dispensers are made by Frisco, Texas-based Fujitsu Transaction Solutions Inc.

The dispensers are being deployed mainly to automate the ticket-buying process, says Henry. While Regal already has hundreds of ticket-dispensing kiosks, they only accept credit cards, and not PIN-based debit cards, so the company decided it needed to broaden the way customers pay for tickets, he says.

Moreover, the ATMs, which will be branded Regal Express machines, also give customers the option to withdraw cash. "We felt like we needed a device with more features," says Henry. The ticket dispensers are menu-driven like an ATM, which most people already know how to use, he notes.

There will be no surcharges assessed when cardholders use the machines to buy tickets, but users will pay a surcharge when they use the machines to withdraw cash, says Henry. He says Regal was able to avoid assessing fees to ticket-buying customers because the function is directly linked to Regal's back-office payment-processing infrastructure.

Steven Birenbaum, Fujitsu area manager, says Scottsdale, Ariz.-based eFunds Corp. will process the ATM transactions and drive the machines. Birenbaum would not say how much the ATMs cost, but they are more expensive than typical off-premise cash dispensers because special software and printers are required for the ticket-dispensing function.

The ATMs will work in conjunction with an Internet-based ticket-purchasing site, Fandango.com, which has a partnership with Regal. Plans call for customers to print a bar-coded ticket voucher at home from the Fandago site. They would then take the voucher to a Regal Express machine, which would read the bar code and dispense the ticket, says Henry.