3 ms·
Decades ago I worked on an ATM that "recycled" money. It did not only had the usual boxes of banknotes that were filled by the bank, but it also accepted deposi
by zvr 7mo ago
Decades ago I worked on an ATM that "recycled" money. It did not only had the usual boxes of banknotes that were filled by the bank, but it also accepted deposits. Usually deposits are put in an envelope by the client and an envelope is stored in the machine; this makes reconciliation easy, since a bank employee opens the envelope, counts the money, and confirms the deposit transaction.
But on this ATM, people would deposit their banknotes directly. The machine would recognize and count them, crediting the correct amount to the person's account. And later, when someone wanted to get money out of the ATM, the machine would use these exact banknotes!
It was an innovative design, which saved the bank a lot of money (in ATM-caring trips) and provided people with a real service, since they could use the ATM longer, instead of getting error messages that it was out of cash (well, it never said that it was something more generic like "problem in operation").
As one can imagine, it was an interesting challenge designing the software and thinking of all the tests covering what might go wrong...
- TRiG_Ireland 7mo agoI've never seen an ATM which took money in envelopes. Does it just take on trust the amount until it's verified by an employee counting it later?
- zvr 7mo agoRemember that we're talking many years ago, in the previous century. The only way to "automatically" deposit cash was to put it into an envelope and then drop it in the machine. IIRC, you used to write the total amount on the outside of the envelope, together with your bank account information. The machine was emptied at regular intervals, the envelopes were transferred to the bank, and an employee was manually opening them, verifying the amount, and credit your account.
- TRiG_Ireland 7mo agoAh, I've seen that, but there was no ATM. You could just drop the envelope into a box in the bank (to skip the queue at the counters). No way to deposit out of hours, though. The ATM system would have been better.