Market Drivers for Financial Institutions ATM Outsourcing and the Changing Infrastructure Support

By John Campbell | June 10, 2021

The diverse trends of ATM Branding, ATM Managed Services, and ATM Outsourcing have been growing over the past decade and visibly accelerated in the aftershocks of EMV, Windows 10, and Covid.

ATM-as-a-Service has become the current buzzword amongst manufacturers, payments processors, traditional 3rd party banking equipment service providers, and Independent Service Operators (ISOs) turned Financial Independent Service Operators (FISOs), who are all diversifying their revenue portfolios and leveraging the banking industry’s burnout from 20 years of upgrades and regulatory initiatives.  By increasing their suite of ATM services to include security, telecommunications, branding, and regulatory oversight FISOs have ingrained themselves deeper with their existing financial services clients and increased their recurring revenues. 

Many banks and credit unions have already moved from the traditional, internally run ‘ATM shop’ to a new platform model leveraging one or more of the various vendor offerings. This has enabled many organizations to get more from their ATM platform for their clients while reducing infrastructure investment, increasing ATM efficiencies, accelerating technological market leaps such as ITMs, and making their digital platform more agile for evolving regulatory requirements.

Each of these ATM focused business initiatives varies in the scope of work, complexity, change of operational ownership, and liability assumed by both the managed ATM providers offering these services as well as the financial institutions who have traditionally ‘owned their fleet’. The amount of front and back end responsibility that institutions are willing to relinquish control of is a case-by-case study encompassing three main points; appetite for vendor outsourcing, current strategic plan around ATM accessibility, and willingness to assume the inherent risk with placing their physical assets and/or visible brand in the hands of their vendor partners.

For both the financial institutions and the ATM providers a comprehensive study in their overall ATM products, ATM services, and attention to financial and regulatory due-diligence needs will enable both groups to assess which programs will benefit long-term business strategies and ensure they are prepared for whatever is next.