News

NCR wants to add animation to ATMs

June 2, 2004

LONDON - DA Group, the creator of virtual characters which pop up in mobile messaging, has struck a deal with NCR Corporation that could lead to the Scottish company's technology appearing on ATMs.

According to a report in The Herald, the deal aims to have DA's digitally-animated characters guiding users through new ATM transactions. (See related story Human touch at the ATM -- without the human)

The technology, called Charisma – and to be launched at Electronics Scotland's annual conference at Gleneagles on June 7 – draws together DA's range of animation tools and applications into one integrated computing model which, the company believes, will open up the market for its character-based communications solutions.

DA said the latest deal is part of an "ongoing relationship" with NCR, the world's largest supplier of ATMs.

Mark Grossi, NCR's chief technical officer based in Dundee, said, "We've been working together for a while to incorporate DA's technology into our ATM technology.As ATMs become increasingly more complex, the plan is to create a new user interface to guide people through these complexities."

"Of course, eventually, we'd like to see our character-based technology popping up on every ATM in America, Asia and Europe, but that's not something that's going to happen next month," said Mike Antliff, DA's co-founder and chief executive. "I will say that this technology has the potential to be enormous."

Antliff also said that the North American and Asian ATM markets were better suited to DA's technology, because UK ATM users tend to "simply withdraw cash from the machines." DA, which is expected to post full-year results toward the end of the month, released a grim set of half-year figures in December – but reassured investors that its market was about to take off, according to the Herald.

It posted a first-half operating loss of £1.1 million (U.S. $2 million), against £313,000 (U.S. $577,600) the previous year.

The company has cut staff, placed an increased emphasis on sales, and recently signed a deal with SMART, the biggest mobile phone network provider in the Philippines, to supply its animated characters for messaging.

DA sold its most famous character, newsreader Ananova, to Orange for £30 milllion (U.S. $55 milllion).