Envelope-free ATMs popping up soon
By Darren Murph 
posted July 19th 2007 9:16AM
posted July 19th 2007 9:16AM
With all the chicanery that's been going on with ATMs of late, it looks like the machines are finally getting back at the humans. In a move that's already confusing creatures of habit, envelope-free ATMs are starting to pop up in highly-trafficked areas, and as the name implies, they require that your deposits not be stuffed into an envelope beforehand. Diebold, NCR, and, Wincor Nixdorf (among others) are beginning to roll out these newfangled machines, which cost some 20-percent more than typical ATMs and sport specialized scanners that can detect how much cash you're actually inserting as you slide your check / bills into its theoretical mouth. The biggest boon here is the drop in processing costs to banks, while customers are likely to be pleased with instant receipts and nearly-instant access to the fundage. 'Course, we're just counting down the days until yet another ATM trickster figures out how to convert a Hershey's wrapper into a $20 bill.[Image courtesy of ABC]
You just may be lucky enough find machines that take the envelopes still. What I wouldn't give to get away from the sh!ttastic world of low-grade/ancient tech like capacitive touchscreens (also featured on the iphone and utterly a piece of crap because of it) and lame single check confirmation. I want to take all my renters checks, put them in one envelope, punch in the amount and walk away. If I have to go through and confirm the amount on each check, what the hell is the bank doing for me?
Wells Fargo in Salinas, CA has been using them for a while. You can select to have a copy of your check printed on the top of receipt. According to my mom its never been wrong about the check amount either, hand written or printed.
We got some of these in the UK building society of Halifax. For crumpled up five pound notes (crisp £5 notes are rare at the moment). I know as i made the machine at my local branch go out of order when 2 £5 got jammed in the machine. However for cheques they'rte really good and use handwritting recognition to determine the value and on he reciept it hasa scanned copy of the cheque.
We've had these machines in the UK for at least 2 years... You put a wad of notes (think it's a maximum of 50), of any demonination and it counts it up and the money goes straight into your account. I've literally deposited a load of money into one paying in machine, and went over to the ATM across the road, and my money was accessible within the 15 seconds it took me to cross the road.
Also have this facility available with cheques, where you put in the cheque and the paying in slip into a machine and you get a small reciept with a scna of both out of it...
this is all old news?
I've seen these across the country for the last 3 years. Mostly at smaller Credit Unions (as those are whom I deal with the most). This is again another example of old media (ABC) being several years behind on technological advances.
TEG
These ATMs suck at Wells Fargo Bank in Silicon Valley, where I have to stand around waiting for one to inspect my deposited checks and when it fails to read the amount, I then have to enter it manually anyway, so my time waiting around has been wasted; the whole process of making a deposit at an ATM is now much more time consuming than it used to be. And as if that is not bad enough, Wells Fargo Bank ATMs are shorter than they used to be, so I always have to crouch just to see the screen. Wells Fargo Bank ATMs just get worse and worse and this supposed upgrade is no exception.
PNC Bank based in Pittsburgh has had envelope-free ATMs for 15 years, the first one existing in 1992. 40% of their ATMs that currently accept deposits are envelope-free ATMs.
I want an ATM that knows I speak English without me having to tell it each time. I understand these newfangled "computers" can be used to store customer information like this. Do any ATM's connect to "computers"?
Already seen it in action at the local (small town of less than 40k people) Bank of America. Its a pretty cool system. You insert the check into the ATM and its instantly scanned into the system and you see it on screen. It reads the dollar amount and text flawlessly. Then when you take your receipt it has pictures of the checks on it. It's really pretty nice / amazing.
this is old news. i have been using one of these for a long time, it actually prints a small version of the check on the receipt, pretty nifty.
My BofA branch in Fort Lauderdale has been using those machines since the beginning of the year.
Had these in Portugal for about 6 years now, coupled with OCR for paychecks.
I used to intern at NCR Asia-Pacific back in 2002, these machines were the hot ish. They've finally arrived to my current location (Washington DC), and are almost always broken :/