infomongo: essays

ATMs are Rude

John Phillips | February 4, 2003

Using an ATM is like visiting a web site back in 1995. And I’m not talking about the green text on a black background design. I mean the quality of the experience, and how the machine stubbornly insists that every visit is my first. The stupid machines refuse to remember anything about me. Just like web sites, before cookies were widely used.

Let’s take a look at a typical transaction. I go to an ATM, insert my card, and enter my PIN, then the machine prompts me to choose a language:

I choose English, and then it prompts me to select an activity. It asks me If I want to:

Life being what it is, I am usually making a withdrawal. I select this option, and the machine asks me which account I want to withdraw from:

This is particularly silly; I can’t get money from my savings account, so this option is really better labeled “dead end” or “start over”.

After I pick an account, the machine asks me how much I want to withdraw. I have to key in the dollar amount, including cents. Again, this is really stupid. The machine can’t give me $10.61. It can only displense money in amounts evenly divisible by 10 or 20, so theyÕre just building a trap here.

After I enter an amount, the machine spits out my cash. Then the machine asks me if I want a receipt:

Then it asks me if I want to make another transaction:

I punch the no button, and it spits out my card.

The whole process takes six steps, two or three of which are completely unnecessary, and several choices are just trap doors, waiting to swallow me up and scold me for my stupidity.

If the process had a little intelligence, the number of steps could be reduced to one. All it would take is for the machine to store some of my preferences.

Let’s say the first time you used an ATM, it asked you which language you wanted to interact in. Then it stored this information in your account. The ATM has to uniquely identify you already, to make sure the PIN you entered is correct for the card you inserted, so it’s got to be accessing a database of some sort. All it needs to is associate my language preference with my card number.

I think most people generally get the same amount of money out of the same account, so another piece of information that ought to be stored is the last transaction. That way, after I inserted my card and entered PIN, the ATM could greet me with the following:

Hello John Phillips, Your last transaction was to withdraw $100 from your checking account, with a printed receipt. Would you like to repeat this transaction?'

Selecting yes would spit out my card, $100, and a receipt. Selecting no would cause you to run through the standard choices. You know, the ones you currently have to go through every time.

If any ATM manufacturer wants to implement this system, that would be swell. (Although I don’t really think Clay Shirky’s lazy web idea is going to work out for me here.)