Last September the Justice Department issued new accessibility rules for ATMs under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) which requires compliance by March of 2012. While most larger banks have been updating their machines on a regular basis and have machines that can be enhanced to meet the new standards, older machines owned by smaller banks will need to be replaced. As a result, a large number of banks are reviewing their ATM strategies and looking at what new capabilities they should add as part of the new investment in upgraded ATM technology.
In recent years, deposit automation – the ability to deposit checks or cash into an ATM without an envelope via imaging – has garnered most of the attention as the “killer app” of the new teller machine. But the same technology also opens the door to various marketing functions, helping to advance the ATM beyond its traditional role as a cash dispenser.
San Francisco-based Wells Fargo & Co., a long-time technology leader, began developing its own more advanced “framework” for ATMs in 2005, according to Jonathan Velline, executive vice president for the bank’s ATM banking and store strategy. Working from in-house-developed middleware and multi-vendor customized applications, Velline says that Wells Fargo’s ATM technology on the 12,000 machines the bank runs provides a common arena where “marketing designers are working in the same sandbox as the developers.”
The new Wells Fargo machines can, for example, identify a customer as one who typically makes deposits at an envelope-free ATM and notify that person when they try to use an older ATM that envelopes are required. Customers with safety deposit boxes can be alerted via ATM slips when their box comes up for renewal and given the option of having the payment automatically debited from their checking account.
