Doral, Fla.--The ATM Industry Association (ATMIA) is pushing independent sales organizations (ISOs) to change their description to independent ATM deployers (IAD) to reflect the evolution of the companies' business models.
"IAD is a much better name than ISO, which has a derogatory connotation," Haze Lancaster, chairman of ATMIA's IAD Committee, said this week during the ATMIA 2011 conference and expo in Miami.
Lancaster described the term ISO as a hand-me-down name given to and accepted by ATM deployers in the early years of the off-premises ATM industry.
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"The name ISO was used during the Wild West of the off-premises ATM industry when the industry was new and there were a lot of open locations to deploy ATMs," Lancaster said.
Other than ATM ISO, the name also applies to merchant ISOs, who solicit restaurants and other business establishments to accept credit cards, said Lancaster, who is a partner of ATM USA, LLC, an IAD based in Morrisville, N.C.
Mike Lee, ATMIA CEO, agreed that ISO has a negative connotation and that ATM ISOs need to rebrand their business model to reflect their economic strength. The IAD designation makes it clear to people unfamiliar with industry organization's purpose, he said. ATMIA, which was founded in 1997, has 279 member companies in the United States.
"IADs control 50 percent of off-premises ATMs in the United States," Lee said. "Since 1996, IADs have become an economic power, providing an important point of cash access to consumers." Industry observers said there are approximately 401,000 to 420,000 ATMs deployed in the United States.
Tim Matthews, co-founder of Grant Victor, a Kaysville, Utah-based owner of eGlobal, one of the nation's 10 largest IADs, enthusiastically supported the change in designation.
"I one hundred percent support the change because the name ISO was too generic," Matthews said. "ISOs don't own their equipment. IADs own, deploy, sell and connect ATMs."
The designation of IAD also would bring U.S.-based ATM ISOs in line with their counterparts throughout the world, which also are called IADs.
