ATM machine

An automated teller machine (ATM) is a computerized telecommunications device that provides the customers of a financial institution with access to financial transactions in a public space without the need for a human clerk or bank teller. On most modern ATMs, the customer is identified by inserting a plastic ATM card with a magnetic stripe or a plastic smartcard with a chip, that contains a unique card number and some security information, such as an expiration date or CVC (CVV). Security is provided by the customer entering a personal identification number (PIN).

Using an ATM, customers can access their bank accounts in order to make cash withdrawals (or credit card cash advances) and check their account balances. ATMs are known by various casual terms including automated banking machine, money machine, bank machine, cash machine, hole-in-the-wall, cashpoint or Bancomat (in Europe and Russia).

A mechanical cash dispenser was developed and built by Luther George Simjian and installed in 1939 in New York City by the City Bank of New York, but removed after 6 months due to the lack of customer acceptance.
The ATM got smaller, faster and easier over the years. Thereafter, the history of ATMs paused for over 25 years, until De La Rue developed the first electronic ATM, which was installed first in Enfield Town in North London, United Kingdomon 27 June 1967 by Barclays Bank. This instance of the invention is credited to John Shepherd-Barron, although various other engineers were awarded patents for related technologies at the time.Shepherd-Barron was awarded an OBE in the 2005 New Year's Honours List.The first person to use the machine was the British variety artist and actor Reg Varney.The first ATMs accepted only a single-use token or voucher, which was retained by the machine. These worked on various principles including radiation and low-coercivity magnetism that was wiped by the card reader to make fraud more difficult.The machine dispensed pre-packaged envelopes containing ten pounds sterling. The idea of a PIN stored on the card was developed by the British engineer James Goodfellow in 1965.
However, the modern, networked ATM was invented in Dallas, Texas, by Don Wetzel in 1968. Wetzel was a department head at an automated baggage-handling company called Docutel. In 1995 the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History recognized Docutel and Wetzel as the inventors of the ATM.[citation needed]
ATMs first came into wide UK use in 1973; the IBM 2984 was designed at the request of Lloyds Bank. The 2984 CIT (Cash Issuing Terminal) was the first true Cashpoint, similar in function to today's machines; Cashpoint is still a registered trademark of Lloyds TSB in the U.K. All were online and issued a variable amount which was immediately deducted from the account. A small number of 2984s were supplied to a USA bank. Notable historical models of ATMs include the IBM 3624 and 473x series, Diebold 10xx and TABS 9000 series, and NCR 5xxx series.

ATMs are placed not only near or inside the premises of banks, but also in locations such as shopping centers/malls, airports, grocery stores, petrol/gas stations, restaurants, or any place large numbers of people may gather. These represent two types of ATM installations: on and off premise. On premise ATMs are typically more advanced, multi-function machines that complement an actual bank branch's capabilities and thus more expensive. Off premise machines are deployed by financial institutions and also ISOs (or Independent Sales Organizations) where there is usually just a straight need for cash, so they typically are the cheaper mono-function devices. In Canada, when an ATM is not operated by a financial institution it is known as a "White Label ATm".
In North America, banks often have drive-through lanes providing access to ATMs.
Many ATMs have a sign above them indicating the name of the bank or organization owning the ATM, and possibly including the list of ATM networks to which that machine is connected. This type of sign is called a topper.

Most ATMs are connected to interbank networks, enabling people to withdraw and deposit money from machines not belonging to the bank where they have their account or in the country where their accounts are held (enabling cash withdrawals in local currency). Some examples of interbank networks include PLUS, Cirrus, Interac and LINK.
ATMs rely on authorization of a financial transaction by the card issuer or other authorizing institution via the communications network. This is often performed through an ISO 8583 messaging system.
Many banks charge ATM usage fees. In some cases, these fees are charged solely to users who are not customers of the bank where the ATM is installed; in other cases, they apply to all users. Many people oppose these fees because ATMs are actually less costly for banks than withdrawals from human tellers.[citation needed]
In order to allow a more diverse range of devices to attach to their networks, some interbank networks have passed rules expanding the definition of an ATM to be a terminal that either has the vault within its footprint or utilizes the vault or cash drawer within the merchant establishment, which allows for the use of a scrip cash dispenser.ATMs typically connect directly to their ATM Transaction Processor via either a dial-up modem over a telephone line or directly via a leased line. Leased lines are preferable to POTS lines because they require less time to establish a connection. Leased lines may be comparatively expensive to operate versus a POTS line, meaning less-trafficked machines will usually rely on a dial-up modem. That dilemma may be solved as high-speed Internet VPN connections become more ubiquitous. Common lower-level layer communication protocols used by ATMs to communicate back to the Bank include SNA over SDLC, TC500 over Async, X.25, and TCP/IP over Ethernet.
In addition to methods employed for transaction security and secrecy, all communications traffic between the ATM and the Transaction Processor may also be encrypted via methods such as SSL.There are no hard international or government-compiled numbers totaling the complete number of ATMs in use worldwide. Estimates developed by ATMIA place the number of ATMs in use at over 1.5 million as of August 2006.
For the purpose of analyzing ATM usage around the world, financial institutions generally divide the world into seven regions, due to the penetration rates, usage statistics, and features deployed. Four regions (USA, Canada, Europe, and Japan) have high numbers of ATMs per million peopleand generally slowing growth rates.Despite the large number of ATMs,there is additional demand for machines in the Asia/Pacific area as well as in Latin America.ATMs have yet to reach high numbers in the Near East/Africa.
The world's most northerly installed ATM is located at Longyearbyen, Svalbard, Norway.
The world's most southerly installed ATM is located at McMurdo Station, Antarctica.
While ATMs are ubiquitous on modern cruise ships, ATMs can also be found on some US Navy ships.
In the United Kingdom, an ATM may be colloqually referred to as a "Cashpoint", named after the Lloyds Bank ATM brand, or hole-in-the-wall.Security, as it relates to ATMs, has several dimensions. ATMs also provide a practical demonstration of a number of security systems and concepts operating together and how various security concerns are dealt with.Early ATM security focused on making the ATMs invulnerable to physical attack; they were effectively safes with dispenser mechanisms. A number of attacks on ATMs resulted, with thieves attempting to steal entire ATMs by ram-raiding.Since late 1990s, criminal groups operating in Japan improved ram-raiding by stealing and using a truck loaded with a heavy construction machinery to effectively demolish or uproot an entire ATM and any housing to steal its cash.Another attack method is to seal all openings of the ATM with silicone and fill the vault with a combustible gas or to place an explosive inside, attached, or near the ATM. This gas or explosive is ignited and the vault is opened or distorted by the force of the resulting explosion and the criminals can break in.
Modern ATM physical security, per other modern money-handling security, concentrates on denying the use of the money inside the machine to a thief, by means of techniques such as dye markers and smoke canisters.
Transactional secrecy and integrity
The security of ATM transactions relies mostly on the integrity of the secure cryptoprocessor: the ATM often uses commodity components that are not considered to be "trusted systems".
Encryption of personal information, required by law in many jurisdictions, is used to prevent fraud. Sensitive data in ATM transactions are usually encrypted with DES, but transaction processors now usually require the use of Triple DES.Remote Key Loading techniques may be used to ensure the secrecy of the initialization of the encryption keys in the ATM. Message Authentication Code (MAC) or Partial MAC may also be used to ensure messages have not been tampered with while in transit between the ATM and the financial network.