Much of the reason has been the delay in getting back-office and networks set up to process the imaged checks, but price has also been a factor according to a Triton executive.

Across all brands of ATM manufacturers, according to Mark Smith a senior manager with Triton, a check scanning upgrade will run in the neighborhood of $20,000 per machine and which prices the feature out of the range of many small banks and credit unions, he explained.

Triton's new through the wall unit, the FT7000, includes an envelop depository which previous machines did not and Triton's Prism ATM software which, Triton said, allows the machines to seamlessly integrate with existing networks and to have a 15-inch customer screen, among the largest in the industry.

Smith attributed Triton's success in making inroads with credit unions and smaller banks to a technological shift in the industry.

"When all manufacturers finally made the switch over to the Windows platform, it really leveled the playing field and allowed financial institutions to start doing what they were predicted to do from the beginning," Smith said. "That was to start looking at more manufacturers than Diebold and NCR."

Smith said that Triton's marketing and distribution model, which relies on retailers to make the sales to financial institutions, prevented it from knowing exactly how many ATMs wound up at credit unions versus banks, but he estimated that the number of financial institutions with at least one Triton ATM to number in the thousands. "We have 800 machines in Alabama alone," Smith reported.

Triton's model for the FT7000 appears to follow a similar pattern that many manufacturers use when introducing ATMs with a higher data encryption standard–a move which, like check imaging, started out as voluntary and eventually became mandatory. Begin first by offering machines that did not include the new standard automatically, but which could be upgraded easily when the new standard became more widely used and then, as prices dropped, begin offering the new technology as standard equipment.

Smith said that, for now, the math on check imaging still makes it too costly. In terms of the whole industry, only 7% of ATM transactions include deposits and if adding check imaging at a cost of $20,000 increased deposit transactions to 8%, well that still would not make back the cost, Smith explained.

He also attributed some of Triton's success to an increased willingness on the part of financial institutions to learn from independent service organizations that have placed ATMs in retail settings for years and have learned how to deploy ATMs less expensively.

"For years in the retail

sector we have had ATMs be profitable with as little as 300 transactions per month whereas some financial institutions haven't been able to have profitable ATMs on 2,000 transactions," Smith said. "The key to our growing

success with financial institutions has been both giving financial institutions a break on the initial price of the machines and then providing machines which need much less service than other models," Smith said.

Smith said Triton machines were designed on a modular approach that allowed them to be upgraded or serviced easily and

quickly.

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