The latest issue of Credit Union Times traces the adoption and spread of ATMs by credit unions, starting in the 1990s, charting the machine’s rise from a novelty to a mainstay of the credit-union industry.
Since 1990, the lowly ATM has moved from being little more than an adjunct to a credit union or bank’s branch structure to being a significant part of customer service strategy and the average retail landscape today, industry executives said.
“In 1990, ATMs were like extensions of bank [or credit union] branches so most ATMs were located at, or close, to branches,” explained Michael Lee, CEO of the ATM Industry Association, an international organization that represents ATM manufacturers and deployers. There were only about 85,000 to 150,000 machines in those days, and they were virtually all tied to bank or credit union branches.
As we’ve noted before, loosening restrictions on ATMs is what drove the explosion in ATM usage:
“The big revolution in the U.S. ATM in this time period was the introduction of surcharging in 1996,” Lee said. The surcharge fee paid by consumers using an ATM not belonging to their bank increased from zero in 1996 to an average of roughly $1.50 in 2003, he added, citing the Federal Reserve. “The fee allowed ATM owners to take ATMs to nonbank areas in the retail sector, closer to where consumers live, work and shop. The fee provided the economic stimulus for the huge growth of the retail ATM.”
And oddly, the explosion of competing retail ATMs helped drive the development of credit union and bank ATM networks. Once people began to see ATMs as a normal part of their financial lives, two things happened: They demanded more and better access to them, and they became more open to using ATMs for a wider range of financial transactions.
Which is why ATMs today do everything from dispensing cash to taking deposits to selling stamps and insurance. 20 years ago, few people would have trusted a machine with such transactions. Today, they don’t think twice about it.
Tags: ATM, ATM machine, ATM machines, ATMs
