Efma: Banks Overlook Potential of ATMs
The automated teller machine (ATM) channel offers exciting possibilities for banks – if they are astute enough to recognise them and then take the necessary action, suggests a whitepaper produced jointly by the European non-profit banking association Efma and Clear2Pay.
The whitepaper, entitled
‘In search of the €1 million ATM: Revisiting and reinvigorating the ATM channel’
, collects presentations and discussions from their think tank webinars.
The overarching opinion is that the ATM has a significant role to play in the future of retail banking both in Europe and elsewhere.
“With all of the excitement surrounding recent developments in the financial services industry, such as the use of social media and mobile banking, the ATM has tended to become the forgotten channel,” said Patrick Desmarès, Efma’s chief executive officer (CEO).
“Banks have either ignored it or overlooked the huge potential it offers for extending their reach and increasing the capabilities.”
“The whitepaper provides evidence that this is an ideal time, not just to make the changes that might be required to ATMs, but to explore new ways of using them to increase revenues to attract new customers through exciting new features, and customer centric services,” said Nicolas Métivier, Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) general manager, Clear2Pay.
“Ultimately, it might be possible to attain the magical goal of the so-called ‘€1million ATM’, as referred to in the report.”
Payment Innovation
Separately, a report issued by Efma in collaboration with management consulting firm Kurt Salmon, finds that banks are exploring numerous ways to generate real value from their payment data, with card-linked offerings and personal finance management (PFM) services leading the way.
The report, entitled
‘Payment innovation: Maximizing the potential of payment analytics’
identifies four opportunities for issuing banks to take advantage of their data and provide businesses and individuals with value-added services: leveraging data to improve internal processes; selling raw data; providing PFM services; and delivering merchant-oriented offerings.
Adoption levels across these areas vary considerably at present. For example, card-linked offerings and PFM are already mature, while raw data monetisation has not taken off.
“Banks are having to adapt their offerings and identify new sources of revenue to compensate for shortfalls in their established business models,” says Desmarès. “While many banks recognise the commercial potential of their payment data, they still need to figure out how they can take advantage of it effectively.
“PFM tools are proving a popular way to use payment data to add value to customers; meanwhile options such as selling raw data to other businesses continue to be approached with extreme caution. The fact is that many initiatives are underway, but we are still yet to see how banks can really maximise the potential of their data.”
“This is an area where an increasing numbers of data analytics specialists are already competing to tap into the value of payment data,” adds Pierre de Brabois, senior manager at Kurt Salmon. “In order to truly succeed, banks must consider whether they should go it alone or whether they should work with other banks or data specialists.”