APTUS Financial
Media Room
Keep up to date with the latest news and developments at APTUS Financial, and throughout the automated teller machine industry. APTUS Financial in the News
Grano wants ATMs to do more than give cash
June 7, 2002
Business Journal
Robert Goldfield Staff Writer
Makers of automated teller machines have long talked about sophisticated new uses for ATMs. To date, however, few ATMs do more than perform basic banking transactions--and perhaps dispensing of postage stamps.
Founders of a new Portland company plan to change that by offering new ATM technology. They expect the transaction platforms offered by their corporation, APTUS Financial, to gain acceptance by banks, ATM networks and various other industries--first and foremost, wireless carriers--that could achieve wider distribution of their products through ATMs.
"We're still convinced that advanced functionality, the ability to perform a nontraditional financial services transaction, is the direction of choice," said APTUS co-founder and chairman Dave Grano. "APTUS was formed to develop and deliver those functions to the industry."
Grano was president and CEO of Card Capture Services, a Portland-based distributor of ATMs that was sold to E*Trade Group in 2000. In March of this year he co-founded APTUS--the name is Latin for "connected"--with Rick Holt, formerly vice president of sales at E*Trade Access. Both executives have backgrounds in the wireless phone industry.
Not surprisingly then, the first APTUS product is technology that allows consumers who use prepaid phone service to buy additional minutes from an ATM. The technology works for prepaid wireless plans and for prepaid long-distance service on land lines. At the ATM, customers would be able to use money from their bank account or from a variety of other electronic sources to refuel their prepaid plans.
APTUS will start installing pilot ATM units offering that refueling service this month or next, and the service should become available to other ATM operators in the third quarter, Grano said. A software upgrade will be all it takes for most existing ATMs to become capable of recharging prepaid calling plans.
The second APTUS product will be technology that automates the process by which banks cash checks written by a customer but payable to a noncustomer. The technology will incorporate fingerprint or iris scan techniques for identifying the noncustomer, Grano said. It will eliminate the need to use a teller for such a transaction, and will shorten the time required to complete such a transaction.
The technology to automate check cashing in bank
branches should be available for testing by the fourth quarter of
this year, he said.
More News>