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High school ATM placement passes the test

June 12, 2013 by Rebecca Hellmann — Marketing and Sales Coordinator, Welch ATM

AmeriChoice Federal Credit Union in Pennsylvania has done what many institutions have waffled on for years — placed an ATM in a community high school. Welch ATM sat down with AmeriChoice marketing specialist Rebekah Frischkorn to discuss the strategy and success of this innovative move.

What made AmeriChoice decide to try a high school ATM?

RF: AmeriChoice already has student branches in several community high schools. However, our high school branches have very limited availability, usually only operating for a few hours during lunch periods a couple of days a week.

Students aren’t always thinking about depositing checks or getting cash out during lunch. They’re usually more concerned about what they are going to eat. An ATM can provide those extra hours of service for when it gets later in the day and they realize they need cash or to make an account inquiry.

Where is the ATM located?

RF: While we have several student branches, right now we only have one ATM at a high school. It’s at Cumberland Valley High School. The location, of course, was very important for us. We wanted to make sure we placed the machine in a high traffic location to make it easily accessible.

Cumberland Valley has a main hallway that accesses the gymnasium, pool, auditorium and other major event locations so we placed the ATM there. This way, our ATM caters to students but also parents and adults that may be attending sporting events, school plays or other activities.

What are the results? Have you had positive feedback?

RF: Oh, yes. We have had a lot of positive feedback for both our student branches and our ATMs. The students are not the only ones benefiting, either. We have a lot of faculty and staff that have told us how much they appreciate the convenience, too.

In fact, our transaction volumes at the ATM have even gone up. In 2012 we were averaging about 350 transactions per month. So far in 2013 we have reached around 460 per month.

Would you recommend other credit unions look into similar programs?

RF: Definitely. We at AmeriChoice FCU are huge advocates of teaching financial literacy.

We have found that there is a real disconnect for financial education. Parents think their kids are learning about financial planning in school but the schools think that parents are teaching it at home.

So we are offering that service. I actually teach some of the financial literacy classes that we offer at the schools. Having the student branches and ATM available at the high schools catches kids right at the age when they are starting to get part-time jobs and pay for gas, buy things and go out on the weekends or after school.

We are really capturing their attention and teaching them financial literacy right before they head out into the world.

AmeriChoice Federal Credit Union is a full-service financial institution in South Central Pennsylvania with more than 15,000 members and assets exceeding $165 million.

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