Article
ATMIA 2016: The evolving future of the ATM
Where will the ATM be 10 to 15 years from now? Literally everywhere, and figuratively, right at the center of the user's daily financial life.
February 26, 2016 by Suzanne Cluckey — Owner, Suzanne Cluckey Communications
... 2017 will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the ATM: Can we even imagine a world without ATMs?
The ATM brings freedom and convenience to bank customers and secure access to money.
As a key part of an omnichannel strategy and as a vital value–added touch point, with cash and cards continuing their dominant role into the foreseeable future, the ATM has successfully reinvented itself for its next phase of development and progress in the faster, more mobile world of tomorrow.
In his presentation at ATMIA 2016 this week in New Orleans, Mike Lee offered a glimpse of this faster, more mobile world from his vantage point as both CEO of the ATM Industry Association and as a futurist.
By 2020, Lee said, another million ATMs will dot the globe, raising the total to 4 million and bringing cash access to the remotest of places on earth.
The consumers using these 4 million ATMs will own a total of 2.2 billion NFC-enabled phones. Indeed, Lee said, NFC will be "a dominant platform and technology enabler."
Which should change the game for ATM deployers who have decided that NFC will never go anywhere as a payment technology.
As for the ATM market, Lee said:
- we will see 37 percent growth in ATM installations between 2014 and 2020 (according to research by RBR);
- ATM cash withdrawals will grow by 50 percent within that same timespan, increasing from 92 billion in 2014 to 128 billion by 2020; and
- despite growth in the world's banked population, we will still have 2 billion unbanked adults around the globe.
Lee quoted RBR managing Director Dominic Hirsch, who wrote last October, "From young markets with large unbanked populations to the most sophisticated where consumers can choose from an increasingly wide array of banking channels, the ATM remains a vital touch point between banks and their customers."
Lee offered a number of points to support this statement.
First, he said, there are the core ATM transactions of cash withdrawal, balance inquiry, statement and PIN requests, and printed receipts that consumers depend on being able to do quickly and easily at an ATM;
Then there is the continuing growth in cash demand — 8.9 percent annually compared with a 2.5–3 percent increase in GDP;
And there are the value-added services — some 200 at last count — provided by ATMs around the world.
According to RBR's numbers, cash withdrawal volumes will continue to grow — by nearly 8 percent between 2013 and 2019.
Additionally, there are the effects of branch transformation on the ATM market, Lee said. "The bank branch is being reconfigured and the ATM is part of the omnichannel strategy going forward."
ATMs and other self-service devices will empower the reinvented branch, he said:
- with assisted self-service — either by video link or in-person at the branch;
- with channel integration — "at the ATM, the digital world meets the real world";
- and with deposit automation, which accounts for two-thirds of branch transformation technology and 31 percent of ATM technology overall.
Lee offered a futurist's view of ATMs in the near-, middle- and long-range future.
The near future, he said, will include technologies already in use: marketing at the ATM; dynamic currency conversion; bill payment and donations; biometric authentication and NFC; cash deposit; video-assisted self-service; and new operating systems.
The middle term will see innovations based on the BYOD (bring your own device) model — that is, fast, cardless and screenless cash access enabled by mobile devices.
It will also see the emergence of thin-client systems that move software and operations to the cloud and simplify future OS upgrades, as well as the introduction of "modularized ATMs" that allow for more customized deployments — for instance, at self-checkout counters.
And in the long term — 2020 and beyond — ATMs will provide services as yet unknown.
Whatever the services, Lee said, the devices will be:
- where digital money meets cash;
- where high tech meets high touch;
- where bank meets customer;
- where high tech meets high street;
- where banking channels meet and converge; and finally,
- where past meets future.
In pursuing the future, Lee said it was important to think about the relationship between time and change:
Time moves in one direction only ... It's not three separate channels — the past, the present, the future — it's one continuous line of evolution.
So that's why I say the past will always be with us. Cash has been with us literally for centuries; actually for millennia. And it's still with us.
But now is the time of change; that's what time brings to us, it brings change: threats and opportunities. And the future is already on its way to us.
So don't see the future as a separate channel. It evolves from the past, through the present to change the present into the future. And a lot of it is embedded in the present right now. That's what you've got to look for.
In short, the ATM industry of the future is already on its way: One had to look no further than the ATMIA 2016 exhibit hall to see it on the horizon.
photo istock
About Suzanne Cluckey
Suzanne’s editorial career has spanned three decades and encompassed all B2B and B2C communications formats. Her award-winning work has appeared in trade and consumer media in the United States and internationally.
Included In This Story
ATM Industry Association (ATMIA)
The ATM Industry Association, founded in 1997, is a global non-profit trade association with over 10,500 members in 65 countries. The membership base covers the full range of this worldwide industry comprising over 2.2 million installed ATMs.
