"Faster Than A Speeding Bullet,..."

An illustration of the speed of an ATM was dramatized in an article recently in the January issue of National Geographic.

Consider that a tourist from the United States was visiting Paris, France, and needed money from their account. Their account is maintained in a bank in Washington, DC. The person could walk up to an ATM in Paris, put in their card, punch in their PIN, and enter a request to withdraw cash from the machine, charging their account in the DC bank. The transaction would go like this...

Upon scanning the card, the French computers would detect that the card is not theirs, so the signal goes to the inter-European switching center in Belgium. That system detects that the card is not a European card, and transmits the message to the global switching center in Detroit, Michigan. The Detroit system recognizes the Washington, DC bank, and sends the signal on there. The DC bank receives the signal, verifies there is enough money in the account, deducts the amount requested, plus a fee for the transaction. It then transmits the withdrawal approval information back to Detroit, which relays it to Belgium, which transmits it to the Paris bank, where the machine is then given authorization to release the French francs equivalent of the dollar amount requested.

The total time it has taken to do this entire transaction? 16 seconds!

Copyright © 1993 Bankers' Hotline. Originally appeared in Bankers' Hotline, Vol. 3, No. 10, 3/93