Protecting Our Future: ATMs Beyond the Pandemic

As our industry struggles through the humanitarian and socio-economic crisis of the pandemic, our thoughts shift naturally towards the future when the lockdown will finally be over and the recovery of society can begin.

Fortunately, the global ATM industry has been investing in a vision of its future since 2017, when the Consortium for Next Gen ATMs was born to create a new ecosystem integrating ATMs and the mobile world through a standard API App model. We have grown to a global project spanning all ATM markets, with over 315 companies in all sectors of the industry currently participating.

Now that the Next Gen blueprint for this model has been signed off and we have a draft standard for a high level API, as the backbone of the new future-proofing architecture, I believe this project, managed by ATMIA, has moved from its “design and define” phase to its “development and implementation” phase. Later this year, our online self-certification will go live, enabling companies to certify their ATM products and services. Over a dozen companies have already pre-registered to get their Next Gen products and services certified.

This shows our industry, under the guidance of ATMIA and several industry thought leaders, has been profoundly proactive, well in advance of the most challenging socio-economic crisis since the Great Depression. We can survive the economic shutdown and emerge in a position for future growth and new investments. We can survive the attacks of the anti-cash zealots, whom I have been vigorously contesting on social media and in public statements, since virtually day one of the coronavirus emergency. It soon became clear that this anti-cash lobby was determined to exploit the public health disaster to push forward their unfree, undemocratic and unfair agenda for a cashless society, using their usual pseudo-science to tarnish the name and reputation of cash and ATMs.

But they have underestimated the industry they have chosen to call their enemy. This is our industry and we are providing cash and frontline services to billions of citizens during the lockdown. This is our industry which has been vigorously planning our collective future with a brilliant Next Gen ATM model, not just to outflank the anti-cash lobby but to keep ATMs relevant for another generation, so that convenient access to cash, and other services at the ATM digital hub, can continue safely for the next two decades and beyond.

This is our strategy for Next Gen cash and for Next Gen consumer freedom and not just for Next Gen ATMs per se.

Let’s join together because together we can get through this crisis, outflank those who call us their enemies and set up a future of growth and prosperity.

About Mike Lee, ATMIA CEO - Mike Lee has been CEO of ATMIA since 2005. He is a qualified futurist and his second book on study of the future Codebreaking our Future is available on Amazon.  Mike is President of the ATM Security Association and Chairperson of the Consortium for Next Gen ATMs.