Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!mailrus!accuvax.nwu.edu!nucsrl!telecom-request
From: bcsaic!carroll@beaver.cs.washington.edu (Jeff Carroll)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: ATM at Retailers (was: Voice Mail Passwords)
Message-ID: <12318@accuvax.nwu.edu>
Date: 17 Sep 90 21:22:54 GMT
Sender: news@accuvax.nwu.edu
Organization: Boeing Computer Services AI Center, Seattle
Lines: 81
Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu
X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu
X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu
X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 654, Message 6 of 7


In article <12065@accuvax.nwu.edu> phil@wubios.wustl.edu (J. Philip
Miller) writes:

>In article <12026@accuvax.nwu.edu> Dave Speed <dspeed@well.uucp>
>writes:

>>On a similar note, our local <Sacramento, CA> grocery chain has
>>installed pseudo ATM's for banking from the checkout line. Perhaps I'm
>>paranoid, but I don't see any advantage (to *me*) in giving the
>>merchant my bank number and PIN. Am I being silly?

	I asked myself the same question the other night when I bought
gas at an Arco station in a fairly unsavory part of town (not far from
my office :^) ). Since the POS terminal asks you whether you want a
receipt, I pushed "yes" and walked into the station, as directed by
the machine. The rather harried clerk looked at me, surmised since I
was standing outside the turnstile that I was a POS customer waiting
for a receipt, and then took a *long* piece of cash register tape into
his hand. In addition to gas receipts from the POS terminal, this tape
was printing receipts for every Pepsi and Hostess Twinkie passing
through the cash register. After a few seconds of puzzling over the
tape, the clerk asked me which pump I used, and more puzzling ensued
until the printer started growling again. Clerk: "Oh, here it is.".

	He ripped the tape from the printer, removed the piece of the
tape containing my receipt, and (presumably) threw the rest away. I
checked the tape - it did not contain my PIN.

	I've concluded that if the PIN *does* find its way into
Atlantic Richfield's network, it's not likely to do so in such a form
as to become archived anywhere. What legal purpose could be served by
such a database?

>Well, this gets a bit far from Telecom, but there are several potential
>advantages to the consumer from this type of arrangement:

>For certain types of checking accounts from some banks, this type of
>transaction may be free, while writing a check is not.

	Or, in this case, writing a check is impossible (would be free
if the gas station accepted checks), and this type of transaction is
not (Arco charges $0.10 transaction fee). To me the advantage is
merely not having to stand in line behind a bunch of people buying
cigarettes, pseudo-hot dogs, and Ho-Hos.

(stuff excised)

>The proliferation of ATM terminals and retail stores using ATM type
>cards seems to be particularly popular in urban areas, but seems to be
>much less popular in small town America.  Now this may be because of
>attitude differences, but I have assumed that much of it is also due
>to the fact that connecting the terminal to necessary host equipment
>is also considerably more expensive and thus the amount of traffic for
>a particular location would need to be much higher for a rural
>location than an urban one.  Can someone knowledgeable describe the
>typical type of connections utilized by ATM equipment (both stand
>alone and in conjunction with a point of sale terminal)?

	I would assume that the functional differences between an ATM
and a POS terminal would be embedded in the terminals themselves.

	Both use plain ole asynchronous modems (usually hidden where
you can't see them, but sometimes where you can see them but can't get
at them. The usual scheme (I believe) is that the ATM dials up a
central site which multiplexes several signals and connects to the
network's central mainframe (often via satellite link).

	It may not be cost effective to run ATMs in locations that are
far removed from the central site of a bank/retailer which uses land
lines, but even in remote localities it would be easy for large
retailers who already have satellite networks in place (e.g., Safeway,
which distributes its own background music via satellite to a downlink
in each store, at least in this part of the country) to have ATMs and
POS terminals.

	The parts of "small-town America" which I frequent are well
populated with them.

	Jeff Carroll
	carroll@atc.boeing.com