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Fiserv Inc. on Wednesday announced CardFree Cash, a new feature within its CardValet mobile-banking app that allows consumers to facilitate a cash withdrawal from an ATM using their mobile phone. The service is available to financial institutions nationwide.
Consumers can use CardValet at 30,000 Diebold Nixdorf and NCR ATMs driven by Fiserv. The geolocation feature within the CardValet app enables consumers to locate CardFree Cash-enabled ATMs. To initiate a withdrawal, users open the app and select CardFree Cash. That action generates a secure access code for the user to enter on the ATM’s keypad.
Houston-based Texas Bay Credit Union, with assets of $540 million, will be among the first financial institutions offering CardFree Cash via CardValet.
CardValet is Fiserv’s white-label mobile-banking app that sends real-time alerts for PIN and signature transactions performed with debit and credit cards. Consumers can also use the app to manage, track, and report specific types of usage and quickly detect unauthorized activity.
The ability to initiate cardless ATM withdrawals is becoming top of mind with consumers, observers say. Research by Diebold Nixdorf reveals that 54% of consumers say that one key to trust in their financial institution is the ability to make cash withdrawals with less friction.
“Today’s consumers are tech-savvy and losing or forgetting a card should not prevent them from accessing cash, particularly in an urgent situation,” David Keenan, senior vice president, product management, for card services at Fiserv, said in a prepared statement.
Experts say the new program should broaden the availability of cardless-withdrawal technology to small and mid-size financial institutions, as well as independent ATM operators.
“A lot of large banks, such as Bank of America, already offer this service through their mobile-banking app,” says Sam Ditzion, chief executive of Tremont Capital Group, a Boston-based advisory firm specializing in the ATM and payments industries. “It’s a service that benefits from the Covid-19 pandemic, because it reduces the steps needed to conduct an ATM withdrawal, which is attractive to consumers.”
The new service also appears to build on Popmoney, Fiserv’s peer-to-peer payment app, which also allows consumers to retrieve money sent to them through the app at ATMs within Fiserv’s Accel debit network, Ditzion adds.
