ICT in the Banks

The A.T.M.

Automated telling machines - the "hole in the wall". Are so much a part of our lives that we take them for granted. Five out of six adults in the UK have a current bank account. Three out of five adults used ATMs regularly dispensing around £108bn across 2bn transactions in the year 2000, a 6.4% increase on 1998. ATMs particularly have grown in importance for cash withdrawal. The ATM which is now the most popular banking channel at 67% for current account customers pushing the branch into second place. APACS research predicts that volumes of ATM transactions will continue to rise growing to 2.8bn by 2007.

How does the ATM work? Well is has a specialist interface with six to ten keys alongside the small screen. In addition there is a numeric key pad. In most European countries ATMs have four possible language interfaces. The first option being to select a language possibly by flag. There after a limited number of options are available and interaction is controlled by the machine in a simple question and answer dialogue.

The ATM is connected to a central computer system run either by cirrus or a maestro network the various ATMs each send messages in turn to the central server. They are connected in a wide Area Network (WAN) in a star topology via dedicated lines. This system provides very high speed and good security levels. The central server runs a database of customers with details of their withdrawal limits. Most cards can be used world wide on appropriate ATMs. In Britain the network used is older than the imnternet and the systems are separate, however in many countries the ATM's use the internet and can thus they machines can offer other services like stamps, cinema tickets, or to pay bills like the phone bill. Sometimes a wider range of account information is also available.

When a customer inserts her car into the ATM the machine reads the following data from the card. One book says that "The Account number, the PIN the banks sort code, the withdrawal limit, the amount withdrawn that day." are stored on the card. However I have doubts that this is true. Because this requires the machine to write to the card. I think the only data on the stipe is the account number. There may be a check sum for the pin number. Details are scarce presumably for security reasons.

Further Reading

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