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How ATMS can offer more than cash

Blogger and columnist Richard Buckle, founder and CEO of Pyalla Technologies, LLC explores the future of ATMs.

April 14, 2020 by Richard Buckle — Founder and CEO, Pyalla Technologies, LLC

For the past month like every blogger and industry influencer I know, the global pandemic has been topping the list when it comes to subject matter. Not a day passes without the coronavirus being the subject of an email or post on all that is driving us into a frenzied state— where did the expression 'social distancing'come from? When it comes to banking, customer experiences and yes, access to our cash, are we witnessing a change unlike anything else we may have experienced? Underlying it all is a growing sense of hopelessness— when will it end, and will society ever return to a way of life it had previously been enjoying?

As someone who spends much of the year aboard airplanes, or as it has been for the past couple of years, inside cars, these nationwide shutdowns we read so much about aren't helping with fostering hope. No, the hope of good things to come seems to have been thrown onto the back burner and left to simmer out of sight. Economies have slowed to a crawl, and it is the economy that needs to be attended to, as much as healthcare, as without an economy, it's back to the cave as we relearn the basics of being hunter-gatherers in the real world. A far cry from what just recently had been the attributes of good sales folks.

I had a need to walk into my local bank branch office. It was one of the biggest banks in the U.S., and it was empty, even as a warm greeting came from behind the counters. It has been my usual practice to limit my interactions with this bank to just a few keystrokes on the ATM outside the branch, but redoing paperwork involved an interaction with the management. Of course, this had to be scheduled as the manager circulates among several branches. What stood out when I arrived at the bank was what the tellers behind the counter were doing— and it had very little to do with cash. They were shuffling paper and filing documents as if the only role the branch was playing was as a repository for the past. Even as the bank was trying to transition into the more profitable business of wealth management, there was a dearth of ideas as to what this actually meant.

However, hope springs eternal. Tellers hope the branch doesn't close even as their managers hope their customers do not turn to other financial institutions. You can make a strong case that should DocuSign become the norm among the big banks if it hasn't already, my trips to the branch could be eliminated altogether. It makes you speculate that going virtual, as so much of society has done of late, will we see banks go virtual as well. Or, is that the major selling point of fintechs who seemed to have embraced this model, even at the expense of reliability and trustworthiness, as the recent outages at Robinhood Financial have highlighted. Virtual or digital currency, unregulated as much of it is today, may be on the verge of a serious break out (in terms of acceptance) but then again, are we really going to see an end to cold, hard cash any time soon?

If you do continue to travel, you know that out on America's highways there are many reasons to have cash on hand. I have always traveled with a couple of hundred dollars in my billfold. Tips, valet parking, food trucks and street vendors; it's still a lot quicker to complete the transaction with cash. Unfortunately, as social distancing is lessened and society begins to take steps towards normalcy, having spent so much time on websites like Amazon, Costco and Walmart, I am not entirely convinced we will see a resurgence of interest in cash. During this crisis I haven't had a need to go to my billfold once, and if current practices translate into a longer-term habit, perhaps even I (a card-carrying member of the silver generation), may forego those trips to the ATM. Is this pandemic the catalyst needed to end our reliance on cash and with it, the need for ATMs? Alternatively, are we on the verge of seeing a repurposing of the humble ATM? Can this oldest of dogs jump and twist and learn new tricks?

Here's a thought. With so much attention being paid to healthcare and to embracing new practices to ensure a reasonable longevity, could the "Drive-Up ATM" make a contribution in this regard? Could technology be advanced to where ATM would be equipped and be connected to where they could advise us on our health? Could they assess whether we were ill or not? Late last year there was talk of "Health ATMs" as "an answer to reducing burden on physicians and health centers." After all, when it comes to security no two industries share a similar burden protecting our privacy and our data.  The phrase "getting diagnostics done through the (health) ATM, results can be transmitted and verified at a centralized control unit"  might sound familiar to any financial institution managing transaction across a network of ATMs.

I have been a strong advocate for viewing ATMs not so much as dispensers of cash, but as an established point of interaction for a wide range of services. It's a very private way to undertake a transaction. Purchase stamps, top-up your mobile phone, print boarding passes— there have been many non-cash transactions implemented through the years. So why not embolden the ATM and give it a more vigorous role in the dual worlds of finance and healthcare? When it comes to "thinking outside the box" are we coming to a point where perhaps it's time to think inside the box and reconsider cash and its role for future generations?

What's most important about ATMs is the billions invested in infrastructure. ATMs are accessible everywhere, secure and monitored and, for the most part, reliable given the mission-critical nature of their supporting applications. So why not hope for a much bigger and dynamic role for the ATM than simply viewing their presence as static boxes destined to stay on the back burner, a necessary evil in a digitalized, virtual world. For the moment, this may be healthcare, but given its machine housing cartridges, printer, and touchscreen, it could do almost anything we would like it to do.

About Richard Buckle

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Richard Buckle is the founder and CEO of Pyalla Technologies, LLC. He has enjoyed a long association with the Information Technology (IT) industry as a user, vendor, and more recently, as an industry commentator, thought leader, columnist and blogger. Richard participates in the HPE VIP Community where he is part of their influencer team.

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