I thought about doing this ages ago but decided against it because I didn’t want to front the money for the ATM.
I’m curious if anyone else thought of this and if so how did it work out for you?
When ING was rebating all ATM fees did anyone operate their own ATM to take advantage of the rebates?
Related Stores
Comments
bikies
On the suject of ATMs….why is it that most of the previous Bank operated ATMs in shopping malls are changing to non-bank units like ATM-X?
Has there been any new legislation banning bank ATM at non-branch sites?Banks would be to pay rent + service the ATMs. ANZ even started to outsource their ATMs services to Armaguard and naturally as bank branches declined, there was no incentive to have to pay other tenants to sub let space for ATMs.
One of my friends works at Vicinity and ATMs were a really good stable long term source of income and you could naturally expect 2-3 from each branch scattered around the centre excluding branches. These days, the ATMx etc owned by Armaguard etc are maybe one in each smaller centre or location.
Not sure on ATMs specifically but have noticed many banks appear to be scaling back their branch services. ANZ and HSBC in Sydney CBD don't do foreign exchange or in-branch deposits anymore (although they're getting upgraded automated machines to do deposits instead).
Maybe the removal of ATMs is along the same strategy where in-person activity is dying. Have noticed they've removed machines from both World Square (LG1) and Town Hall (interface with 580 George St) too.
Although can't remember when the last time I had to actually use one or even pay in cash, which is probably half the reason anyway…
Because once CBA made all their ATM's fee-free for everyone, then all the other Big banks also followed CBA & made their own ATM's fee-free.
And now, the banks don't make any money from their ATM's, and with the decline in cash transactions, it's no longer justifiable for them to maintain the ATM's as a way of attracting new customers.
@Amaris the answer is simply banks long ago had outsourced the servicing of their ATM networks to cash management companies like our Armaguard.
In the last few years most of the banks have sold their out of branch ATM networks off to these cash management companies. Which is led to these brands consolidating their purchased ATM networks into one like atmx if you own three ATMs at the same location why would you continue to operate three ATMs at that location you're going to consolidate into one.
I believe out of the big four banks Commonwealth is the only one that still owns their ATM network and hasn't sold part of it off. I don't know if NAB has sold theirs yet but they've put it out for expressions of interest.
Here's a breakdown.
Armaguard (atmx)
The rediATM, network owned and operated originally by Cuscal many credit unions were partnered to use this network or were doing cobranded ATMs with them. Also consists of ANZ out of branch network and I believe they've bought a couple of little other ATM providers as well as buying an ATM network from another largish bank not in the big four.
Prosegur
Purchased Westpac ATM network and have consolidated a bunch of other little players as well.
But those two are definitely the biggest. Banks don't want to be in the business of cash management long-term. So expect more offloading and consolidation.
Commonwealth bank has sold their atm network to Armagaurd who own the ATM-X
So while CBA was promoting that you could use any bank card and not pay a fee there well selling off their network so that it was a non starter.
If you think the upfront cash is the biggest problem then I'm guessing you don't really know much about how the banking system works.
Did they have loss prevention mechanisms in place to deal with this or are you referring to AML reporting?
I had the idea before CBA got done for not reporting cash deposits at their ATMs.
When I looked into it ATMs were widely used and they specifically advertised unlimited ATM withdrawals for free at any ATM.
Are you asking whether someone went out and set up their own atm machine?
How many years to break even?Yes I’m curious if anyone exploited it. I thought there had to be at least one ATM operating small business owner on here that took advantage of the generous offer.
At the time the rebate was for any ATM.
Even the ones that charged $5.
Withdraw $20 get $4.5 rebated after network fees.
Even the $15 ones got rebated
This is more effort and risk than an ozbargainer withdrawing $2200 a day in $200 lots to get $5.50 rebate, which itself is more effort and risk than just use a HSBC debit card with cashback
The 2% stopped working for cashout around the end of 2020.
Cashback on tap has stopped? That’s sad
I did consider opening one and charging $10 for a withdrawal, then rebating the customer most of the $10 for using the atm. I didn't think it work out due to being ozbargained.
True but there was more rewards also. At the time I had a business that was willing to host it for me for free. There was a second hand market at the time also for ATMs.
Unlimited ATM withdrawals rebates with $2200 daily withdrawal limit so $2200 / $20 = 110.
When I looked into it an outright purchase of an ATM was $7K. Network fees were low.
No limit on price of fee rebated at the time too so assume after fees rebate was $4.5 then potential profit would be 110 * $4.5 = $495 a day.
So if this plan was successful then the ATM would have been payed off in roughly 15 days.
I saw that post you linked to. It was a while after I thought of this but if I remembered correctly he just withdrew and deposited the cash into the same account. If I was to do what he did I would have deposited into a separate account then transfer it into the ING account.
To be clear ING no longer offers the rebates that made this loophole possible.
I am just curious if anyone here tried it. I figured this would be the best place to check.
It wouldn't work because ING aren't stupid and would pick up on it pretty quickly. Its always in their terms and conditions that they can withdrawal any rebate offers at any time, especially if you're clearly abusing it in a way not consistent with a normal customer…
It wouldn’t work now because they stopped offering the rebate.
At the time I never heard of anyone getting their account shut down.
I agree if someone tried 110 transactions a day it would have look sus and raised some flags eventually. Two a day probably not so. That would have netted $3285 over a year.
Need to add a poll