Integrating ATMs with Other Self-Service Channels
The success of the ATM is nothing short of phenomenal: there are over 1.8 million ATMs deployed worldwide, and about one ATM for every 285 households in the US. Consumers love the convenience of getting cash, checking their balances, and obtaining mini-statements. Yet, the industry has seen a negative 10 percent growth rate in transaction volume over the past few years as consumers increasingly turn to debit and credit card purchases. Plus there is the ubiquitous free cash-back on PIN debit card purchases at many retailers now.
However, even with the downturn, the ATM is still a powerful channel and continues to be a keystone of customer service for many financial institutions. It is a tremendous marketing tool, albeit one that is often underutilized. The face time that financial institutions deploying ATMs receive from their customers – and potential customers – can be utilized for both brand building, advertising their products and services, and driving adoption of online banking services.
While ATM fleets are a great asset to any financial institution, they must be more closely integrated with other self-service channels, especially online banking. The institution’s website is the online face of the bank, and at Postilion, we believe that the Internet and ATM channels must cease to operate as silos and be more tightly integrated. Our Postilion for Banks and Credit Unions solution allows the institution’s online banking clients to configure their preferences such as language, withdrawal amount and default account, and then see the results when they use the institution’s ATMs, improving their overall customer experience.
When the same platform is driving online banking and ATMs, a whole new world of possibilities emerges. For instance, ATM users that currently don’t have an online banking account can be prompted to open one with a temporary username and password on the ATM receipt. Both channels can be used to market services like e-statements and bill payment, or products like credit cards, mortgages and HELOCs. Institutions need to be able to know who uses which products and services – as well as who has turned down previous offers – in order to properly tailor their offers.
It is equally important to consider the ATM in light of other channels beyond retail and business Internet banking. For instance, there is the up and coming mobile banking channel, and the always popular telephone banking channel. We have leveraged the Postilion platform to permit institutions to meet all of these self-service business needs. For instance, Postilion Mobile supports a wide range of banking and payment functions, is multi-language and multi-currency capable, and offers a consistent look and feel across Postilion self-service channels.
Another extremely important area that financial institutions are concerned with is card issuing and management. Postilion for Banks and Credit Unions includes a robust card management module that can handle magnetic stripe cards, EMV smart cards, gift cards, and stored value cards, all of which can tie back into ATMs, Internet banking and mobile banking. Postilion is unique in its ability to bring all of these channels together via a common administration portal which is an easy-to-use browser-based interface that provides a unified view of customers. The end result is much more personalized service and a more loyal customer.
Financial institutions are looking for software solutions that are easy to deploy and manage, as well as extremely reliable. Our solutions meet these goals because the modules are installed by default – all the institution has to do is purchase a license key and the software is configured for their customers to use. As far as reliability goes, we have seen ‘five nines’ of availability on Microsoft SQL server running on Stratus FT servers. For those customers that require a Unix platform, Postilion also supports IBM Series P servers and DB2. Whether it is in-house or ASP, Postilion’s integrated solutions are the right choice for self-service banking and payment processing.
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