Thursday 13 November 2014

ATM- The power of a swipe

“My dad is an ATM” is a very common quote seen in various social networking sites and also as graphitti on T-shirts. We nowadays refer to any source from where we get instant cash as our ATM. This shows how the ATM services have increased their popularity and have become an integral part of our life. It is a facility that freed us from the stuffy lines in banks and has saved us from trouble in times of urgent need of cash on Sundays and other holidays.

Mostly used for cash withdrawal, the term ATM today commonly stands for Any time money. It will be surprising to know that the first ATM or Automated Teller Machine (as it originally stands for) was actually used only for cash deposit. This was a service which was developed for helping the customers to do their financial transactions without physically coming to the bank. The first experimental ATM was most probably set up by City Bank of New York. But as previously said, this machine could not dispense cash and ceased to be popular. The first proper ATM was set up by the Barclays bank of UK. This one was the ancestral model of the today’s highly advanced ATM facility.

The journey that begun in the 1960s, has turned out to be a revolutionary development in present. ATM services of today are not just merely limited to withdraw or deposit cash from a convenient location without going to the bank. The ATM card can be used almost anywhere today instead of cash. Be it shopping or eating out, people nowadays have started to forget the concept of carrying cash. Also these ATM cards which are also known as debit cards now can be used for online purchasing. Stringent security measures are followed nowadays by the banks. So along with the power to purchase the world with a swipe today we are also free from the worries of losing our cash on losing our purse.

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