ATM Marketplace rounds up the year’s best and worst stories of the ATM industry. The highlights:
NCR Corp.’s move to Atlanta…. It signifies NCR’s commitment to bringing the manufacture of its ATM line back in-house to the United States. It means an end to so much outsourcing, and that’s a good thing for the industry and the end-user, i.e., NCR’s financial-institution customers.
The rebranding of TRM Corp. to Access to Money, following TRM’s April 2008 acquisition of Access to Money…. Let’s face it. TRM was struggling, and had been for quite some time. Frankly, I don’t know how the company was able to keep itself afloat for so long. By taking on the Access to Money name, the one-time ATM giant is able to take another shot at greatness.
Diebold Inc.’s focus on integrated services. 2010 will mark a year of continual ATM replacement and upgrade, as banks [migrate] to automated ATM deposits, cash recycling and mobile-device interaction. Once those upgrades [are done], the replacement cycle won’t occur quite so frequently…. What that means for ATM manufacturers such as Diebold is that solely relying on products for revenue … is corporate suicide. [But] bankers can’t afford to service these ATMs, nor do they want to. They’d much rather rely on the experts, and that’s where outsourced, integrated services come in.
Canada’s nearly complete migration to EMV. Will the United States ever get the clue? Canada’s completion of the migration to the Europay, MasterCard, Visa standard, which admittedly will take a few more years, is going to rock the United States card market. The advanced security of chip-and-PIN technology already is pushing more fraud to the United States, where the feeble and inferior magnetic stripe still reigns.
And their vote for the worst event of 2009? The collapse of the merger between Triton and Nautilus Hyosung.
If these two companies had joined forces, they would have created a powerhouse in the retail ATM space. Triton, a dominant and well-respected brand in the United States, and Nautilus, which is pushing to make a stronghold in the U.S. retail and financial markets — the companies could have made some waves. But concerns about an industry monopoly by the Department of Justice led the two entities to sever their ties and call off the $63 million deal.
But the deal was abandoned for a reason: the merger would probably have killed off ATM manufacturer Tranax, which is why the DOJ had monopoly concerns. Thus we would have gone from three big manufacturers of retail ATMs to one. That wouldn’t have been good for anybody, least of all ATM owners and customers.
And with the merger talks out of the way Triton has move aggressively forward with competitive plans, moving its headquarters, releasing new models and licensing a new ATM communication standard.
All in all an eventful but generally positive year for the industry — a minor miracle given the rough economic climate. With the economy apparently on the mend, there’s reason to believe that 2010 will end on a much happier note.
