Mobile ATMs

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 Conveniences of a Mobile ATM

Conveniences of a Mobile ATM

A mobile automatic teller machine is an ATM on wheels, one you can rent for a special event such as a county fair, music festival or circus. You could even set up a mobile ATM at a more solemn occasion, such as a graduation or a civic ceremony honoring military veterans. Really, any event at which merchandise is sold or donations are collected – that is, any occasion at which attendees might suddenly realize they need extra cash – is an event that can benefit from the presence of a mobile ATM.

Mobile ATMs usually uses an ATM wireless technology –not telephone lines – to send and receive information about customer accounts, so they know how much cash they can dispense to various individuals. Sometimes these ATMs do require a power source, however, so make sure you have an extra electrical cord handy, one that will be long enough.

Increasing Your Business

In fact, so many mobile ATMs have been appearing at large and small events in recent years that many attendees come to rely on them. Some people are loath to carry more cash than is absolutely necessary. In many cases, these people figure that if they see souvenirs or other items at an event that appeals to them, or to their children, they can simply head to a mobile ATM and get the funds to buy those products. Therefore, if you do not have a mobile ATM at your event, you will lose out on all of that business. In addition, customers with easy access to cash tend to stay at events longer, and in the process, of course, spend more money. Furthermore, if your event relies on third-party vendors, you want to make sure those vendors make as much money as they possibly can, lest they decide not to return to the event the following year. On top of all that, it can be easier and faster for customers to pay with cash at outdoor events than with personal checks or credit cards. And when cash is used, event organizers do not have to worry about checks that bounce, and you and your vendors are not responsible for credit card processing fees. (In fact, many event vendors refuse to accept any credit cards.)

Safety and Weather Concerns

Mobile ATMs are designed with customer safety as a top priority. They come with bright overhead lights to ward off criminals who would lurk in the shadows, and sometimes they include visible security cameras as well. As the planner of an event, you can further increase your mobile ATM customers’ feelings of security by putting the machine right in the middle of the action – in an area that you know will be heavily-trafficked, as this placement will certainly discourage would-be thieves as well.

One especially helpful feature about mobile ATMs is that event planners don’t have to worry about the weather when they order them. Mobile ATMs, just like the stationary ATMs you find out on the streets, are built rugged, more than able to withstand all kinds of weather conditions, including driving rain and heavy snow. They are water-resistant, too, and usually they include advanced temperature control systems to heat them up or cool them off as conditions require. If the weather is going to be horrendous, however, you could always elect to set up a mobile ATM indoors.

Choosing a Rental Company

When you’re looking for a mobile ATM rental company to patronize, look for a company offering the following:

  • strong encryption measures to safeguard passwords and user data – triple encryption is recommended
  • excellent references
  • at least several years of experience
  • signs that will guide customers to the mobile ATM

ATM Robberies

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ATM Robberies

You Can Never Be to Cautious

Generally speaking, automatic teller machines are very safe to use, and there’s no reason to be alarmed at the prospect of getting robbed at an ATM. Still, it always makes sense to be cautious. First, you be aware of the four different categories of ATM robbery.

  1.  A robber approaches a person using an ATM and forces this victim to remove cash and give it to him.
  2.  A robber orders a victim to give him his ATM card and PIN number, so that the robber may withdraw cash from an ATM on his own. This kind of robbery, of course, could occur far away from an actual ATM.
  3. A robber stakes out a particular ATM. Then, when someone withdraws money from that ATM, the robber follows her, and at some point demands that she give him that amount of money.
  4.  A robber abducts someone and brings that person to an ATM so the victim can withdraw cash and hand it over. This is the rarest kind of ATM robbery.

If someone brandishes a weapon, or even suggests that he has a weapon on his person, and orders you to take money out of your ATM and give it to him, or to give him your ATM card and PIN number, you should never try to fight back. Keep in mind that about 15% of ATM robbery victims are injured, and injuries most often occur when victims resist their robbers. Remember, too, that the average ATM robber only gets away with about one or two hundred dollars, as so many ATM robbers are drug addicts who just want some money to get their fix. That’s a sum of money for which it’s certainly not worth risking injury or worse. You should also refrain from trying to run away or trying to somehow outsmart a robber. Instead, follow the robber’s instructions until this person is out of sight, and then contact the police immediately. If you can, try to remember exactly what the robber and the robber’s vehicle – if there is one – look like so you can give accurate descriptions to the police.

At some point in the 2000’s decade, an urban legend about ATM robberies began to circulate, and this information was widely spread via email. It said that if you are being robbed at an ATM, you should enter your PIN number backwards, as when you do that, an ATM will dispense the amount of money you ask for, but at the same time it will alert police officers that a crime is taking place at that exact location. It’s not clear precisely how or where this rumor got started, but it is not true. Entering your ATM PIN number backwards accomplishes nothing, and the delay for cash may anger your robber. So don’t fall for this hoax if you hear it for yourself sometime.

Much of the information we have about the frequency of ATM robberies comes from surveys done by the major banks. These surveys tell us that the rate of crimes occurring at ATM’s is low: a crime happens about one time for every million to three and a half million times that customers use ATM’s. Now, it might be common sense, but standalone ATM’s – ATM’s which are not located inside banks or other premises which are guarded – are much more likely to be robbed. Drive-through ATM’s are also, statistically speaking, safer from robberies than the kind you walk up to. And most ATM robberies occur at night – specifically, between the hours of midnight and four in the morning.

If you want to use an outdoor walk-up ATM in a place where no police officers or security guards seem to be around, try to find one that’s well-it, on a street where plenty of people are walking by and hanging around. Take a good look around before you go up to an ATM too, as most ATM robbers will wait until a victim takes her or his cash out before making a move. And if you are ever robbed at an ATM, you should contact your bank to let them know as soon as you possibly can – but be sure to call the police first!

ATM Cash Replenishment Tips

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The process of loading your automatic teller machine with new bills is called ‘ATM cash replenishment’ (and not, for whatever reason, ‘ATM cash replacement’). It’s important to replenish your ATM’s cash as soon as it starts running low. If people find that your ATM does not provide them with sufficient funds, your business’s reputation may falter. You might even start losing customers.

What is the process for ATM cash replenishment?

ATM Cash Replenishment Tips

Once you’ve been operating one or more ATM’s for a while, the cash replenishment process will become routine. But there are important procedures you should always follow whenever you’re replenishing your ATM’s supply of money. They will protect your money, your ATM and most important, your safety and your employees’ safety.

  • First, try to vary the times at which you replenish your ATM cash. For instance, you could replenish early Tuesday morning one time, late Friday afternoon the next time, midday Monday the next, and so on. Don’t stick to a pattern of replenishment times, either. Instead, replenish on a completely random basis to the greatest extent possible. Not to induce paranoia, but thieves could be staking out your ATM at this very moment. They could be trying to discern when it is you do your replenishing.
  • Remember that you should replenish your ATM’s one at a time. You should replenish your cassettes one at a time as well. There should be no customers inside your place of business during a cash replenishment procedure. Shut your doors and shut your blinds to shield this process from the view of people passing on the street. Have on hand an alarm system, too. One you could strike at a second’s notice to automatically contact 911 in the event of a robbery attempt.
  • Before the new stacks of cash enter your automatic teller machine, take the time to flip through them. Look at each bill to make sure everything seems OK. That is, check that none of the bills is counterfeit or torn and that none contain markings indicating they might have been stolen. Also, make certain that each of the bills is the denomination that it’s supposed to be. If you find any problem bills, contact your bank’s manager at once, and don’t let them go inside your ATM.
  • If you have a safe full of cash on your premises which you use during cash replenishments, change the combination of that safe after each replenishment. Don’t use a master key with this safe, either. You’ll greatly increase your risk of theft if you were to ever misplace your key.
  • You should take enough time during an ATM cash replenishment to ensure you don’t make any mistakes, but at the same time, you should work as quickly as you can so that the process takes no longer than it has to. Also, never place any container holding cash on the floor, and certainly never take your eyes off of such a container, even for a split-second!

Secure services are available to take care of ATM cash replenishment

There are plenty of companies you can hire to take care of your ATM cash replenishment needs for you. A good service will order all the cash you need, and bring that cash to your place of business in an armored vehicle. They’ll also carry the cash from that armored vehicle to your ATM in a secure container. Further, that company may deploy an entire team to take care of these duties, including:

  •       the armored car driver
  •       at least one armed guard
  •       at least one experienced technician to actually replace the money

All these employees should present identification to you before you admit them into your business. In some cases, the ATM company will give you a list of employees along with samples of their signatures, so you may compare a signature on an ID card to a signature on your list.

Some of these companies are available to replenish ATM cash seven days a week, 24 hours a day. And in many cases, such companies offer ATM maintenance services in addition to cash replenishment – freeing ATM cards when they get jammed, for example – as part of a package. Hiring one of these companies to take care of your ATM cash replenishment needs will not only save you and/or your employees time, but it may eliminate a source of anxiety as well.

Outrageous ATM Glitches

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Can ATM glitches affect you?

Outrageous ATM Glitches

You can breathe a sigh of relief to know that the chance of something going wrong when you use an automatic teller machine is very small. But even though ATM glitches rarely happen, when they do occur they can be significant. In fact, some recent ATM issues might leave you shaking your head, and might leave bank managers trembling in fear.

Types of Outrageous ATM Glitches

When banks adopt new technologies, ATM problems sometimes result. For instance:

  • June 19, 2012, a computer glitch caused by a change in company software prevented the Royal Bank of Scotland from making any payments to its customers, including payments through ATM’s. Even though the offending glitch was fixed almost right away, it spurred a chain reaction of events that led to inoperable ATM’s, among many other banking issues. These problems lasted for days and affected millions of people.
  • Bank of America, which operates the U.S.’s largest network of automatic teller machines, also had a recent brush with ATM glitches caused by new technology. In the mid-2000’s, Bank of America began introducing ATM’s with scanning systems; these machines scan checks and deposit them into accounts. However, a number of these new devices refused to recognize certain checks, or did not follow through with the process of actually depositing the value of a check into a customer’s account. In a few isolated incidents, the machines completely shredded customers’ debit cards. No long-term damage was done, however; Bank of America took care of everyone who registered a complaint about these machines. And the vast majority of Bank of America’s new ATM’s worked without a hitch. Still, these incidents serve as reminders that bank customers always need to examine their bank statements to make sure they have the correct amount of money in their various accounts.

Natural disasters and mass panic can also bring about ATM glitches. In the aftermath of the terrible Japanese tsunami of 2011, thousands of ATM’s were out of order for hours. For at least one bank, Mizuho, the malfunctioning ATM’s were caused by an enormous uptick of customers trying to withdraw money from these machines.

On the other hand, sometimes ATM’s please customers too much. In 2009, Ronald Page, a retired autoworker in Detroit, found that a broken ATM in his home city was allowing him to take out all the money he wanted. So he took out $1.5 million, and he brought that cash to several casinos. He lost the entire amount. Later, prosecutors charged him with theft, and sought to have him jailed for 15 months. The lesson here: unlike in the board game Monopoly, when it comes to ATM’s in real life, there’s no such thing as an “error in your favor.” Therefore, if an ATM gives you more money than you know you have in your account, or if you go up to an ATM and find someone else’s money lying around, report the issue to a bank manager with the extra cash in hand. It’s not worth going jail over a mistake that wasn’t even yours to begin with.

Perhaps the most common “glitch” that occurs at ATM’s isn’t really a glitch at all. It’s called the “cash retract.” If you order a certain amount of cash from an ATM, but you don’t take that cash out right away, then that money will shoot back inside the ATM after 30 seconds. Imagine this scenario: you order $50 in cash from an ATM inside a bank. But just as the money is coming out, your young child runs away from you, and you have to chase her throughout the bank to retrieve her. You return more than 35 seconds later only to find your $50 is not there – it’s returned to the cash dispenser inside the machine. Yet it’s likely you’ll still have that $50 deducted from your account. What you should do in such a situation is let a bank employee know about it right away, so you can be sure that you’ll be reimbursed.

In fact, that really is an important message to repeat and to end on: whenever you are the victim of any kind of ATM glitch, notify your bank immediately, as doing so offers you the best chance of getting fully and promptly compensated.

ATM Machines, A Buyer’s Guide (part 3)

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A Buyer’s Guide (Part 3)

ATM Machine Buyers Guide image of Cash

If you’ve read part 2 of the [intlink id=”2013″ type=”post”]ATM Machines, A Buyers Guide[/intlink], you’re ready for part 3. Now you know if you want an automatic teller machine at your place of business or if you want to own and operate ATM machines as a business.

Let’s say you own a local brick and mortar business, but you don’t want to purchase the machine outright, you basically have three alternatives: leasing the ATM or arranging payments over time, opting for a free ATM placement program, or partnering in an ATM co-op program.

First, Leasing: Hardly anyone leases an ATM anymore. Most sales reps that try to lease ATM’s are looking for big commissions. It’s difficult to get a lease on a $2500 piece of equipment so they have to jack the price way up to get a leasing company to even consider it and then you’re paying them big commissions. It’s actually easier, cheaper and better to pay for the ATM with a credit card or to ask your bank for an equipment loan to include other equipment you may need in your business and to include the price of the ATM in the loan

First, if you really want to lease an ATM, (I’d like to talk you out of it) but you may need to search the Internet (or the yellow pages) for leasing companies located reasonably close to your business or get a recommendation from the vendor. Try sampling a few such companies to find the most favorable leasing terms – each company’s agreement will be different to some extent, but most leases go 5 years. First, and most importantly, you want to figure out who’s offering the lowest cost for a lease. Also, who determines how much your customers will have to pay in ATM fees to make your lease payment each month so you don’t have negative cash flow. Leasing companies will rarely over fund the equipment lease to give you extra cash to fill the ATM. Some business owners think this is a great idea, but the cost of that extra cash is very high and not worthwhile.

You should also compare the economics of leasing versus buying to be absolutely sure that you’d prefer to lease. Specifically, you should weigh the following factors:

  • If you’re planning on leasing a machine for a long time it would save you a lot of money in the long run just to purchase one.
  • If you can take out a loan at your bank verses leasing, that is the next best option instead.
    • Note that some vendors offer short term funding options such as 60 or 90 days. Since most ATM’s these days are typically under $2400 most business owners pay cash or use a credit card, however, we have seen deals where a merchant is able to put 50% down on a credit card and float the balance for 30 days.
  • Would buying an ATM allow you a substantial tax deduction – or could you get more tax deduction mileage out of deducting the annual costs of leasing an ATM?
  • Does it seem as though you’d stand to make a lot of money from ATM surcharge fees? If so, then owning an ATM might be the more lucrative proposition.

Second, Free Placement Programs: The next option for you as a business owner may be to consider entering into a free ATM placement program. If you’ve never heard of this option, you should know that free ATM programs have been around for a long time. What you have to do is find either a local or national ATM vendor that runs such a program and fill out an application.

Free placement programs typically require  that your business needs to be attracting a certain number of customers each day in order for you to earn acceptance. If you’re accepted, the vendor will ship an ATM to your business, install it, maintain it and service it as needed. Some free programs even take care of restocking the cash in the cash dispenser for you. In addition, you may qualify to receive some portion of the surcharges that the ATM collects, which the vendor will send you either through direct deposit or in the form of a check.

All in all, a free program is, no doubt, the easiest way for business owners to obtain an ATM. However, the profit potential from such a system, obviously, is much lower. Note, too, that companies offering free placement ATM’s will require a substantial amount of information about you and your business (they will even be delving into your bank account figures) before they approve you for such a program. While the free placement program sounds great, it takes the longest to get approved and returns the least amount of profit.  The pros are that you don’t have to deal with the ATM machine at all.  It may be easier to get approved from a small local company verses a large national company if you can find such a local entrepreneur willing to take on your business as part of their ATM portfolio.

Third, Co-Op Program: The last option to consider and a bit newer, is to enter into an ATM co-operative program. Under such an arrangement, you’d buy half the ATM and load the cash. That is, you’d be co-owner of the machine, paying for half of the upfront cost and half of all the operating and repair costs.

An ATM vendor, the other co-owner, would pay the other half of those costs. In a way, this kind of program splits the difference between owning an ATM yourself and getting a free placement or owning the ATM outright.  That is, you get a much larger share of the profits verse a free placement program would allow, but you also have more maintenance responsibilities. And, you’d get a lot less than if you owned the ATM outright yourself.

While co-op agreements, like leasing agreements, can vary widely, if you’re in such a program you’ll probably have to replace the receipt paper, load the cash as necessary and provide first line maintenance (FLM). FLM includes clearing a paper receipt jam or a cash jam. The co-op deal is more suited to a hands on business owner or manager who doesn’t necessarily have enough cash to purchase the machine outright. By the way, it’s your own cash that will go into the machine. And you’ll have to decide if you want o install any security features – a new camera or an alarm, for example or if you’ll just remove the cash from the ATM each evening like a cash register.

An extra benefit of the co-op program, however, is that the ATM vendor can figure out where to place the machine within your business, and can also provide you with helpful advice when you’re still a novice at ATM operations. That way, you can really maximize the profits you’ll get from your ATM. In some instances you can agree to a buyout over time if the vendor is in agreement.

Once you decide if you want to own the ATM or have someone else do it, it’s time to decide who is going to load the cash.  We’ll talk about that in the next ATM Machines, A Buyer’s Guide in the near future.  Have questions, [intlink id=”509″ type=”page”]contact us[/intlink].