'The Future of the ATM' to be shared at European ATMs 2010

On June 10th and 11th, the European ATMs 2010 conference will be held at the Park Plaza Victoria in London.

The two-day event will center around a speaker program involving case studies that address ATM hardware, software and service-related topics. Conference attendees will be able to view many of the new ATM technology solutions and exchange information and views with other industry professionals as well.

"European ATMs has now firmly established itself as the leading ATM conference in Europe, bringing together more than 300 banks, IADs, network processors, vendors and service providers at one event," said Amanda Hardy, marketing director (Europe) for the ATM Industry Association (ATMIA). "This year we have a very strong program and our attendees are particularly looking forward to hearing the views of top names in our industry like Bob Tramontano from NCR, Dave Wetzel from Diebold and Uwe Krause from Wincor Nixdorf giving their views in our opening session on ‘The future of the ATM.'"

After the opening session, there are a number of programs on important topics. One of is titled "Going Green with Remote Power Switching." Wolfgang Braunwieser, managing director of SBS Software of Austria and Andreas Hohaus, product manager, self-service channel of FIDUCIA IT AG of Germany, will present on the challenges faced by institutions in reducing energy output while maintaining service levels. A showcased solution will be the ability to use remotely controlled monitoring software to control the power used by the ATM.

According to Braunwieser, the idea is simple: a self-service terminal receives its electrical power supply from an automatic on/off socket for TCP/IP networks. This socket has a customary LAN connection and is controlled via TCP/IP using the http protocol. If the self-service terminal is not needed, the ATM application closes in a controlled way and the self-service terminal is shut down and completely cut off from the electrical power supply via the socket. Later, the power supply is activated via network at the programmed time and the self-service terminal is quickly back in service. The outlet would consume as little as 2.5 watts rather than 300 watts currently required for the self-service terminal.

The solution could be particularly useful for terminals in areas which are inaccessible at night (e.g. shopping centers, grocery stores). Even in other areas, terminals that help handle transactions during peak hours but are not needed at night can be turned off.

Another important topic will be presented by John W. Smith, senior risk product manager of Visa Europe, and will be titled "Combating Cross-Border ATM Fraud - a Visa Europe Perspective."

Smith says counterfeit cards are often used in non-EMV capable acceptance areas, especially ATMs.

"Cross-border ATM activity poses a dilemma for issuers in establishing whether a given transaction is genuine, and should be authorized, or fraudulent and should be declined," Smith said.

The presentation will stress the use of appropriate monitoring tools and applications so transaction activity can be monitored at the device level and norms of activity can be detected. With such tools, spikes outside of acceptance tolerances would enable alerts to be generated and delivered to the issuers. The information could then be used to modify in-house fraud detection systems. Such targeted fraud detection systems are important, because if issuers become over-aggressive at declining transactions, genuine cardholders might be denied and become inconvenienced.

The event is jointly produced by the ATM Industry Association and Retail Banking Research. For more information, visit the website at www.atmiaconferences.com.