Today there is lots of talk about the “cashless” society, where everything will be paid for by either your mobile phone or a piece of plastic in your wallet, there will be no more cash. Well cash still plays a large role in our lives as does the ATM cash machine. ATM machines have been with us for almost 50 years (the first commercial ones were introduced in 1969). Since then they have changed a lot to offer all sorts of conveniences – dispense money in $1, $5, $10, and $20, pay some of your bills, and a host of other things. Even with the advent of debit cards and more electronic payments, there are still roughly 425,000 ATM machines in the US, with more than 3 million worldwide (there are even 2 ATM machines in the Antarctic).
ATMs are not without their problems. In the early days, there was a lot of theft, from thieves recording people’s’ pins and other information, then making clone cards to steal their money, to the construction of fake ATM machines to take your deposits. Today, there are skimming machines that thieves attach to the magnetic card slot reader, to steal your card information, which they can use later to relieve you of your money.
With all this, it has been found that businesses who install an ATM machine on their premises (and keep them safe), find that patrons will return a lot of the money they pull from that machine, back into the business. In many bars and restaurants, almost 80% of the money taken from an on-site ATM machine, is returned to that business. While the number are lower for other businesses, they still show that the ATM money comes back. Are you ready to have a machine installed on your business site, but don’t know where to go or the right questions, let B & B Financial Services help you out.
