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On the High Road

Bird droppings, size 11 shoes and serendipity in an explosive ATM industry across the Big Pond.

January 27, 2002

What's so good about being splattered on the head with a pigeon's droppings just as you shake hands with a prospective business partner? And what's so exciting about finding yourself without a pair of shoes just one hour before an important business meeting? Does appearing to be in the wrong place at the wrong time sometimes turn out to be serendipity - making fortunate discoveries by accident - in disguise?

I'm here to answer these intriguing questions and provide a personalized overview of the ATM industry across the Big Pond. My name is Mike Lee, international director of the ATM Industry Association. You will discover as you read this new column (on the world's leading online ATM trade magazine), that bird droppings and size 11 shoes have brought me lots of luck in my adventures on the high road for ATMIA across Britain and Europe.

First, then, the magic of bird droppings. One of my earliest meetings after being appointed to set up ATMIA Europe in September last year was with ADT Fire and Security, part of the worldwide Tyco group. I met up with ADT's Keith Miller in Victoria Concourse, London, and it was there and then as I shook his hand that the aerial bombardment took place. Pigeons in London are almost as populous as people and there is a pigeon colony ensconced in the famous concourse.

Keith laughed and said, 'That's supposed to bring you luck!' I cleaned my hair as best I could but throughout the meeting I was acutely conscious of a sticky sensation on top. In retrospect, I was in the right place at the right time, despite appearances to the contrary. At the end of the meeting, Keith had joined the board of ATMIA Europe and his colleague Eric Worrall from Manchester had joined at entry level.

Since then the accidental bird droppings have continued to exert their magic - our advisory board has grown rapidly to 16 members embracing an impressive range of ATM businesses including switch operators, network processors, ISOs, financial institutions, manufacturers, CiT companies and ATM security businesses, software providers, ATM refurbishers and ATM advertising and media groups.

Now to the size 11 shoes. You may not know it yet but Britain's LINK Interchange Network Ltd.has become the world's biggest switch processor measured by transaction volumes. This ATM network offers access to more than 25,000 UK ATMs, processing well over 40 million ATM transactions monthly. One morning just before last Christmas, I left home at 4 a.m. by car to drive up to LINK House, Harrogate, North Yorkshire to meet John Hardy, chief executive, Howard Aiken, card scheme director and Adam Reid, business strategy manager. As I neared my destination, I realized that I must have been half asleep when I had left home - I had brought my suit to change into but no work shoes.

Fortunately, in a village close-by I noticed a big sign announcing a pre-Christmas shoe sale. It was one hour to go before the meeting. The only suitable shoes on sale were a pair of size 11 black Clarks (I take size 10). I attended the meeting with 'bigger feet' than customary but it was my head that was bigger than normal after the meeting. John gave the go-ahead for LINK to join our board and agreed to be keynote speaker at our main inaugural conference In London in September. John is the epitome of the English gentlemen and has been a wonderful asset to ATMIA Europe, even offering to join up with us to present workshops on ways to integrate national ATM networks in countries of Europe where networks are fragmented.

On that issue, there is generally a divide between Western and Eastern Europe, with Western Europe having mostly integrated national ATM networks whereas in several Eastern European countries there may be a few ATM networks that operate separately from one another. John has more than one template for unifying ATM networks which he is willing to share with these countries. This is a big issue for ISOs wanting to expand across Europe.

Tom Hannon, Chairman of Hanco, explained that to me when I flew back to Britain with him from Germany after the massive Wincor-Nixdorf trade show at Paderborn. When I met Tom and Terry Turner, UK managing director, at their head office in Milton Keynes, Tom had asked me all the hard business questions about what ATMIA Europe would be able to achieve. Tom is a strong, upfront man who is one of the great pioneers of ATM independent deployment - I felt I did not have all the answers to his questions and that there was little chance he would join us. Then he said, out of the blue, 'OK, we'll join your board.' Hanco was our first board member - effectively getting us started on the high road of progress. We have four other independents on our board - Moneybox, Cash Card, TRM and Securicor Cash Services.

Talking about ISOs, who make up a large part of our U.S. membership, it is amazing to visit powerful Western European countries like Belgium and the Netherlands and find not one single independent deployer operating there.

Also significant in a country like Belgium, in many ways at the heart of the European Union, is the strong movement toward a smart card-dominated banking environment, a glimpse into a more cashless society of the future. At the same time cashbacks have grown greatly in popularity in this increasingly 'cheque less' country.

Banking landscapes across Europe are about to change considerably as independents deploy more and more ATMs in petrol stations, shopping malls, supermarkets, office buildings, entertainment complexes, pubs, hotels, football stadiums, university campuses, etc. and as new software architectures on ATM networks create more applications and opportunities from pre-pay mobile phone top-ups to national and localised ATM advertising.

And on that last exciting topic, to me the biggest thing in ATMs since surcharging, I close chapter one of this story - on the high road across Europe to find keys to the future of the ATM industry across the Big Pond. In that quest, I'll need plenty of that good old serendipity, even if I have to pay for it by an occasional smattering of bird excrement on my head in London or by having to wear my outsize 11 shoes for a while yet.

Included In This Story

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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.

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