AUSTIN, Texas. – Watch out Diebold, NCR and Fujitsu, a new player has arrived on the U.S. credit union ATM market. Wincor Nixdorf is the third largest ATM provider worldwide, but the company has generally not been as big a player in the United States market, a factor which Saul Caprio, director of business development for the firm, attributed to the firm's concentrating on its European roots before it began a push among North American financial institutions. "The firm wanted to get established firmly in Europe," Caprio said, "and we wanted to get a strong American partner." The firm found that in IBM, and entered into a partnership with the computing firm to market its ATM hardware and software early in 2002, Caprio said. The partnership with IBM was in many ways a natural fit, he said, because Wincor has long led the ATM industry in the production of "open access" ATM software tied to IBM's Window's NT software. There are more non-Wincor ATMs worldwide being driven by Wincor's open software systems than Wincor machines running the system, Caprio noted. Wincor is the leading ATM provider in Germany, second in Europe overall and has placed ATMs in 21 of the top 25 European banks, the firm said. In the U.S. much of the firm's ATM energy has been focused on placing ATMs with non-financial institution deployers, merchants or others. In August 2002, Wincor and IBM announced that Valero Energy Corporation has elected to place 1,500 Wincor cash-dispensing ATMs in 1,200 of its Diamond Shamrock Corner Stores, Stop N Go, Ultramar, Valero, Beacon and Total retail outlets. Similar deals have been struck with Western Union, E-Trade and others, Caprio said. But while Wincor has remained a minority player in the credit union ATM market so far, one prominent ATM placement promises to bring the "24/7 credit union" closer to credit unions who want to have it, the firm said. In May 2002, the $632 million Tyndall Federal Credit Union took delivery of four Wincor machines to supplement its already existing fleet of 23 Diebold ATMs. The credit union, which used to serve Tyndall Air Force Base in Panama City, Florida, had a lot of military members who needed more than just cash dispensing services and were often on very mixed schedules with little opportunities to access credit union services from a teller, according to Janet Turner, vice president of interactive services for Tyndall. "We wanted a way to not only allow our members to make withdrawals and deposits at any time, but also print statements, loan documents, checks – services that are usually available only at a branch banking location during normal business hours," Turner said. "We also wanted to be able to notify an ATM customer, for example, of a pre-approved loan status while he or she is using the ATM," Turner explained. This meant that we needed the ability to utilize the Local Area Network to bring products and services to ATMs, she said. "I realized that we should not limit our search to only products that are sold primarily to credit unions to find what Tyndall needed," Turner said. "Increased competition in the financial industry meant that we had to look at the technologies being adopted by larger financial institutions." Turner found those technologies on the floor of a banking trade show, where she came upon a Wincor booth, "right next to a Diebold booth," she said. "When we talked to Wincor we found they spoke our language – the first ATM vendor to understand where Tyndall FCU wanted to go with the technology," Turner said. While the attention of much of the ATM world has focused on providing machine users with the possibility of buying stamps, movie tickets or public transport tickets, none of which have particularly caught the imagination, Turner noted, Wincor has focused on how to provide real banking services and products through an ATM. Wincor's machines, among other things, can deposit and dispense cash and coins; read check images; load and unload an electronic purse; process passbooks, including withdrawals, deposits and updates; print account statements, cashier's checks, receipts and other documents and accept bulk deposits, the company said. And Wincor could provide us the machines that can do those things and the software interfaces that let us work on bringing them into our already existing systems, Turner said. The credit union has been very pleased with the machines, Turner said. Unlike the current pilot project underway with Chicago-based Bank One, in which pilot ATMs built by NCR scan deposited checks and send the scanned image to the bank's back office for processing, Tyndall's Wincor machines make decisions about the checks right there. By looking at the check's codes the ATMs are able to recognize, for example, if the check is a major employer's payroll check, Turner said. Further, if it is not, the machines can then compare the check against a database of previous checks to find out if the credit union has previously seen a check drawn on that account and, if all else fails, the ATM can look at the relationship the credit union has with the depositor when deciding whether to completely credit that check or not, she said. "Most of our members never get to that level," Turner said, "because we credit checks under $1,000 automatically, but when someone does have a larger check, the machine does the work." Turner acknowledged that most credit unions may not be interested in all these services right away, but predicted the time would come when even more will want to be able to provide more of their services through the ATM. [email protected]