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As the U.S. payments industry continues its massive migration to EMV, issues here and there, such as payment cards being left behind in ATMs, pop up.
About six months after INTRUST Bank completed its ATM EMV conversion a year ago, the problem of unrecovered cards started, says Joe Morin, ATM operations supervisor at the Wichita, Kan.-based bank, which has 96 ATMs, according to an ATM locator on its Web site.
It was during a visit to a convenience-store ATM location where a store clerk held up a stack of debit cards he had collected from the INTRUST ATM over the weekend when Morin learned of the issue, he says. “It wasn’t a huge issue,” Morin tells Digital Transactions News. “I was more concerned about trying to prevent issues.”
EMV debit cards used at ATMs introduced a change in consumer behavior. The cards must be left in the machines so the chip can be read throughout the transaction. That leads some customers to grab their cash and go, leaving the cards behind.
For Morin, the fix was a simple change in the ATM code that required card removal prior to opening the shutter door to dispense the cash. “It has eliminated 99% of the problems,” he says. The fix cost a few hundred dollars, he says.
In fact, the card-before-cash setting is common in the majority of ATMs around the world, says Owen Wild, global marketing director for enterprise fraud and security at NCR Corp., via email. “Estimates are believed to be 60/40 where 60% of ATMs are card-before-cash. U.S. market numbers can be lower, but a trend to migrate to card-before-cash is being seen with the growing adoption of EMV,” Wild says.
Configuring an NCR ATM for card-before-cash is an option. “In the U.S., some applications have card-before-cash switched off, but the host can enable it,” Wild says.
On the kiosk front, McDonald’s Corp. will expand the use of kiosks as ordering and payment machines.
The kiosks enable consumers to skip the front counter and proceed to a table while they wait for their food to be prepared for them. The kiosks have been tested in at least one McDonald’s store, in Downers Grove, Ill. There, the consumer picks up a numbered pager after inputting an order.
McDonald’s said the kiosks will be integrated into its forthcoming order-ahead and mobile-payment app enabling customers to store a profile, with customized favorites and preferred payment methods also available at the kiosks. Mobile order and pay will be available in 20,000 restaurants in some of the chain’s largest markets, including the United States, by the end of 2017.
