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Beer, hockey, bacon -- and ATMs
With the advent of surcharging and the entry of more independent players, the landscape of Canada's ATM market has changed dramatically in the past few years. So perhaps it's not surprising that there is now a homegrown ATM. The SmartTouch ATM is "the only piece of hardware manufactured in Canada," said Reid Morgan, vice president of e-Link Resources, the machine's master distributor in Canada. It's made by Northrop Grumman Canada Ltd., a subsidiary of Northrop Grumman Corporation that creates self-service kiosks for the airline and travel industries, among other products. According to Morgan, "progressing into ATMs" was a logical move for Northrop Grumman-Canada, which simply incorporated cash dispensing into its existing product line. An ATM fit nicely into Northrop Grumman-Canada's focus on "transactional self-service applications," agreed Kevin Peterson, the company's product manager, self-service solutions. "It wasn't a huge stretch for us. We were already doing 80 percent of it." Indeed, while e-ticketing is touted by U.S. ATM manufacturers as one of the applications of the future, Northrop Grumman-Canada has been creating such applications for the airline and movie theater industries in Canada for several years. "Other manufacturers started with cash dispensing and are moving toward ticketing, while we started with ticketing and added cash," Peterson said. "We've had e-commerce and multimedia capabilities from day one." The machine's 15-inch color touch screen, stereo sound and full-motion video functionality, and a software platform suited for Web-enabled applications make it an early e-commerce contender, Morgan said. As the ATM market matures and transactions flatten, he thinks more deployers will demand units with those types of features. "A machine that can offer three or four different revenue streams, as opposed to just one, makes a much better investment for those who want to get into the business now," he said. "We think we're in the right place, at the right time and with the right product." According to Morgan, his first customers will likely be large retailers who are interested in multimedia and advertising programs. A pilot at five Texaco stores in the U.S, if successful, could expand to include many more ATMs, he said. Among the Web-enabled applications Texaco plans to offer: ordering flowers, checking stock prices and obtaining maps and directions online.
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