Examining ATM trends in 2021 and beyond

ATMs have played an interesting role during the COVID-19 pandemic. While initially customers raced to ATMs to pull out huge sums of money, in time some began to spurn the use of ATMs due to concerns over catching COVID-19 from the keypad.

In time, some of those concerns have waned, but branches have still had to adjust their strategies, both inside and outside of the branch to meet the needs of a changing customer expectations and desires. As a result, more banks are beginning to look at ATMs as more than just a cash dispenser but as a mini-branch in of itself that can deliver more banking tools to customers.

At the same time, banks are also having to address criminal activity as thieves come up with new methods to steal ATMs.

In order to gain more insight into these ATM trends both now and in the future, ATM Marketplace is interviewing some of the major players in the ATM space. First off, ATM Marketplace spoke with Simon Powley, head of advisory services and consulting for Diebold Nixdorf to get his insight into these trends.

Q. What do you see as the biggest hardware trends this year in ATMs?

A.

• Integration of digital and physical capabilities at the channel will continue to grow and evolve. Specifically, cardless transactions utilizing mobile technology and verification will continue to trend upward.
• Continued personalization by leveraging marketing and core integration to streamline the consumer 'journey.'
• Denomination selection
• Video-based banking: FIs are having a hard time staffing both rural and urban locations and are curious about this as a potential long term fix. Compared with older use cases, this is a new phenomenon.

Q. Are ITMs growing in usage? Why or why not?

A.ITMs continue to be selected as customer preferences turn to digital and banks continue to look for efficiencies. This reduces the cost per transactions for banks and improves the customer experience through better reliability and accessibility.

Q. How is DN addressing security concerns?(such as from robbers)

A. We have had zero successful hook and chain attacks on our DN Series and CS series ATMs while our competitors are having to spend thousands of dollars on each ATM to fix or help secure their machines.

Q. What do you see as the biggest future trends for next year?

A. I would say next year will continue with the same trends as this year.