An automated teller machine or automatic teller machine (ATM) (American, Australian and Indian English), also known as an automated banking machine (ABM) in Canadian English, and a cash machine, cashpoint, cashline or sometimes a hole in the wall in British English and Hiberno-English, is a computerized telecommunications device that enables the clients of a financial institution to perform financial transactions without the need for a cashier, human clerk or bank teller. ATMs are known by various other names including ATM machine, automated banking machine, "cash dispenser" (Germany) and various regional variants derived from trademarks on ATM systems held by particular banks.
On most modern ATMs, the customer is identified by inserting a plastic ATM card with a magnetic stripe or a plastic smart card with a chip that contains a unique card number and some security information such as an expiration date or CVVC (CVV). Authentication is provided by the customer entering a personal identification number (PIN). The newest ATM at Royal Bank of Scotland operates without a card to withdraw cash up to £100. The customers should register first their mobile phone number and bank will give a six-digit code to enter into ATM to withdraw the cash.
Using an ATM, customers can access their bank accounts in order to make cash withdrawals, debit card cash advances, and check their account balances as well as purchase pre-paid mobile phone credit. If the currency being withdrawn from the ATM is different from that which the bank account is denominated in (e.g.: Withdrawing Japanese Yen from a bank account containing US Dollars), the money will be converted at an official wholesale exchange rate. Thus, ATMs often provide one of the best possible official exchange rates for foreign travellers, and are also widely used for this purpose.
Read more about Automated Teller Machine: History, Location, Financial Networks, Global Use, Hardware, Software, Security, Reliability, Fraud, Related Devices
Famous quotes containing the words automated, teller and/or machine:
“Nature is a self-made machine, more perfectly automated than any automated machine. To create something in the image of nature is to create a machine, and it was by learning the inner working of nature that man became a builder of machines.”
—Eric Hoffer (19021983)
“One wants a Teller in a time like this.”
—Gwendolyn Brooks (b. 1917)
“The chrysanthemums astringent fragrance comes
Each year to disguise the clanking mechanism
Of machine within machine within machine.”
—Wallace Stevens (18791955)