Why cash recycling is a must during COVID-19

Unlike traditionally recycled materials such as plastic, paper or metal, cash recycling doesn't change cash into something else; it changes the process of managing it.

A cash recycler can dispense, count, track, store, sort, reconcile, authenticate and accept cash and reduce vault holdings. It improves productivity, operational proficiency and flexibility, as well as speeds up customer transactions by automating previous manual tasks and processing. And in this day and age, most importantly, cash recycling reduces the opportunity for multiple touchpoints, keeping customers and staff safer.

As the ATM industry deals with the reality of COVID-19, finding more efficient, innovative and safer ways of doing business is essential. Cash recycling can be a major benefit.

"Cash recycling is much more than having cash go through a feeder and be dispensed for future transactions," Bill Budde, vice president of product marketing at ATM manufacturing forHyosungsaid during an interview with ATM Marketplace. "Cash recycling is a streamlined approach to cash management that can benefit any business or industry that dispenses and handles large amounts of cash."

Budde said one of the biggest benefits of cash recycling, especially now as the country is dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, was that it minimizes the touchpoints that cash normally goes through.

"When you think about the life of a dollar bill and what happens to it when it goes into a bank, then a vault and then into an ATM, it's already been touched a number of times," he said. "Then you have a lot of steps in the [deposit] process from the point a customer puts [the deposit] into a machine until it goes back to sitting in a vault. When an ATM is actually recycling cash, as opposed to just dispensing it or taking it in, you eliminate a lot of those touchpoints from an operational perspective. It's especially important now when it comes the current health situation we have and there being an unknown contagion out there."

Although ATM sanitizing and cleaning has gotten a lot of press, creating fewer touchpoints is even better.

"I think most banks are very concerned about cleanliness in general because of an appearance perspective, Budde said. "That ATM carries the bank's brand forward to its customers, pretty much any bank is going to be concerned about the general cleanliness associated with any ATM. I think that the biggest health concern is more from an operational efficiency standpoint."

Budde said staff at banks spend a great deal of time counting cash and reconciling it as it moves from one location to another.

"All that movement is reduced drastically with a cash recycler," he said. "With cash recycling you don't have to refill machines when they empty, you don't have to take big stacks of deposits from the machine and sort and count it. You free up a lot of steps when you recycle the cash and it gives employees within your organization and opportunity to focus on more value-added tasks."

Aaron Vallely, vice president of retail experience for Hawaii State Federal Credit Union, agreed, saying that cash recycling saves time and improves the cash management process.

"Using cash recyclers allows our staff to better understand and manage our in-branch cash needs," Vallely said. "We've also improved our operational efficiency as the cash recyclers help to reduce the number of times staff have to go into the branch vault and the machines help to speed up balancing at the end of the day."

Kurtis Johnson, director of product management for cash and logistics atFiserv, provider of technology solutions to the financial industry, agrees especially from a business trends perspective, that cash recycling makes good business sense.

"What cash recycling does from a merchant perspective, rather than just automating the deposit process, is it allows [a business] to automate the entire cash supply chain so that both the deposit process and the replenishment process or withdrawal process is automated," he said. "It also greatly reduces cash touchpoints, which is especially important in this day and age."

A system for every business

As the cash recycling industry moves forward, creating newer devices that can do more to streamline efficiency and productivity is more important than ever.

"You have major players in the retail cash recycling space like Hyosung, Glory and Tidel, who have done a great job coming out with devices that covers everyone from the Mom and Pop store to the big box retailer. Five or 10 years ago, that wasn't feasible, but these companies now make products that the low-end cash market can use too."

With more companies using the technology and hardware, Johnson said cash recycling helps companies realize how to fully use the cash from their business. And one way they do it is through analytics.

"It's important that a company finds the right solution for their specific needs whether it's a low-end cash recycler or a high-end one," Johnson said. "Analytics help companies dial in to the right piece of hardware and the right solution for their customer and the volume of business they do. This way they aren't over buying."

He also said that companies often fail to see how they can improve their businesses just by helping manage the cash they already have.

"What's the point of a dollar sitting in the till if it isn't earning a business money? If your money's not earning interest your cash flow is just sitting there waiting to become available," he said. "Businesses can optimize their system and minimize the amount of cash they have on hand by optimizing the amount of cash they have in their accounts."

Once that happens, they can do more things like "track inventory, pay staff, pay bills and even take their business in a new direction," he said.

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