National City Improves ATM Fleet with Diebold

National City Bank (Cleveland, $120 billion in assets) has set its sights on ATM excellence.

In November, National City began a $30 million, 30-month, enterprise-wide rollout of approximately 1,000 new Diebold (North Canton, Ohio) Opteva ATMs and 600 upgraded units.

National City's first goal was improved customer service. "One segment we are dedicated to supporting is our visually impaired customers. We have been doing a lot of work to learn the best methods to provide delivery channels in our branches and online, and our ATMs are the next natural extension," says Matthew Burns, senior vice president of electronic banking for National City.

Customer security was the next criteria. "We are increasingly pushing for security, privacy and safety at our ATMS," he explains.

Along with that was information security. "We required our new units to meet industry mandates like Triple DES and Unique Key - these are algorithms that encrypt and decrypt customer codes before the transaction passes through the network."

Lastly, National City needed new hardware and operating systems to support these new improvements. "Most of our existing ATMs run on an OS/2 operating system. We need to move to Windows to support our new requirements," Burns adds.

National City will deploy Diebold's Opteva ATMs running on Windows XP. These units feature large LCD touch screen technology; a fraud-resistant dispenser and card reader; Triple DES-compliant encrypted PIN-pad; an extra canister to disperse cash or marketing materials, and voice guidance and text applications in both English and Spanish.

They also include consumer awareness mirrors, recessed keypads and display areas to assist in preventing theft and fraud.

Burns was impressed with positive customer feedback to the new technology. "Customers uncomfortable using our ATMs used to modify their behavior at the units," he explains. "Now customers report they felt autonomous while safely managing their transactions at the new ATMs."

Within six months, National City hopes to further increase customer service through more personalized services. "We will track screens customers opt for most often, and present those to users first," he says.

Within 12 and 18 months, Burns may choose to leverage the technology to take advantage of the recently passed Check 21 legislation. "The ATMs have the ability to image deposits and check MICR," he adds.

"This will enables us to eliminate envelopes during deposits, and we can streamline transactions as they are automatically directed to our back-end systems."