LONG BEACH, Miss. – Triton Systems of Delaware, the wholly owned subsidiary of New York-based Dover Corporation, hopes marketing to credit unions will help it move from manufacturing ATMs primarily for retailers and independent sales organizations to supplying the ATM needs of smaller financial institutions, primarily credit unions and community banks. “We have seen a lot of excitement from credit unions about our products on a couple of fronts” said Doug Sholes, Manager of Financial Institution Sales for Triton. Sholes explained that a growing trend among credit unions to place ATMs in arrangements with retailers and among smaller employer groups has made Triton's machines, which can run up between one half to one third less than competing nationwide brands, popular with credit unions who are looking to provide ATM services in previously unexplored markets. The company also hopes its new 5000 series ATMs, which can both stand freely in lobbies or go through a wall, can help it advance into the market for branch based machines. Sholes said additional interest in both areas has come from credit unions seeking to upgrade their ATM fleets to comply with the new encryption and disability requirements at as little additional cost as they can. Under the so-called Triple DES requirements, ATMs need to be able to encrypt and transmit transaction data encrypted in the new, higher security, standard. In practice this means ATMs often need upgrades to their keypads and other hardware. They must also meet the needs of disabled users in accord with regulations implementing the Americans with Disabilities Act. The machines' strengths for credit unions comes from their lower price, their use of a Microsoft Windows based operating platform and interface, which allows them to be configured to offer Western Union Money Transfers, cash checks or refresh telephone cards. Their weakness from the point of view of some credit unions might come from their not being able to accept deposits and their reliance on dial-up lines for access to their networks as opposed to dedicated data lines. But Stephen Swofford, CEO of the $165 million Alabama Credit Union, based in Tuscaloosa, said neither problem has kept his credit union from deploying 12 of the Triton machines, including two of the FT5000 series machines. The FT5000 machines are Triton's through-the-wall units and are currently in beta testing at selected credit unions around the country. Swofford said that overall the testing has gone very well and his credit union had no real concerns about being one of Triton's beta testers. “Like all beta testing, we have had some issues,” Swofford said, “but every time something has come up that needed to be ironed out, Triton has gotten it fixed right away.” Swofford said his credit union had timed the transactions by the Triton machines at 17 seconds, which it considered not to be unreasonable at low volume transactions. The two through-the-wall machines went into a branch facility that the credit union does not anticipate using for more than a couple of years and at which it would not have wanted to spend the money for a full service machine. He also explained that the lower cost Triton machines have enabled the credit union to approach some employers in the area about providing the machines as a convenience to their workers. That access, in turn, has led the credit union to be able to sign up the employer as a SEG. “We have found that the new business this has brought us has usually paid for the cost of the machine after a while,” he said. Because Triton markets its machines only through ISOs, it is hard to get a measure of how many credit unions might be using them around the country. However, Jim Roemen, part of the sales force for Financial Equipment Data Corp., based in Mobile, Alabama, an ISO which only markets Triton machines, reports that of the 700 Tritons that the company has placed this year, half of them have gone to credit unions. He explained that the machines did not always go to the credit union itself but would sometimes go into a retailer that agreed to have a credit union branded machine in their retail space. Sholes said that while credit unions' increased interest in Triton has been good, the company was also seeking to help its ISOs come more up to speed on getting to know and market to credit unions. [email protected]