I am curoious how most banks service their remote, off site ATM's. By service I mean restock the cash supply and balance the machine. I assume the options are a courier service, armored car service, police escort, or simply by bank employees.

Maybe it's just me, but I'm reluctant to share specifics of how and when we transport large amounts of cash to an anonymous poster on a public site.

Armored car service appears to be the most popular way to do off site ATMs, based on my experience.
Of course, I'm sure that in some very safe town in a very boring part of some very safe rural, Midwestern state, someone does it in a more risky fashion. But I have never personally heard of *anyone* doing it like that.

I agree with the reticence of sharing that type of info with anonymous.

I'm with you guys! Anonymous it seems a little too risky for me also.....

I would also be reluctant to share this information, however, since we do not have off-site or remote ATMs I can't really answer the question anyway.

My bank did, and after repeated pressure, I got them to switch to an armored carrier company. Too risky!

We are one of those small midwestern towns that was mentioned. All of our (7) ATM's five located in convenience stores are serviced, cash added, paper, ribbons, etc by our bank employees (two). Yes, it's a risk that we are willing to take. Your armored car services change paper on a time schedule, wasting at lease half of it, and you also end up with more cash being tied up in ATM then when you just swap canisters when needed, never the same day or time of day, just as needed. I am posting this as an anonymous poster to keep my location off the listing.

Just shows you how times have changed. Back when I was young and indestructible, we used to walk about $80,000 in a paper bag up the block to the remote drive-through. At about the same time, one weekend I had to drive (in my Pinto) $90,000 from one branch's ATM to another branch at the biggest local mall because the mall branch folks forgot to stock their ATM for the weekend after Thanksgiving. (Dual control?! Dual control?! We don't need no stinkin' dual control!)

Banking was wild and wooly back then. Now, I won't even talk about what we do or don't do over the internet. Sheesh!

The options all have to do with risk versus cost. Using employees is the least cost, armored car is normally the highest cost. Specific ATM location, rural or urban area, crime rate, etc. are all in play. Of course it's one thing to re-supply during the day and very different to send somone out at night to fix a unit.

Please do not give specific dollar amounts on your posts. When talking with reporters I never give dollar amounts or answers as to whether cash has been reduced or increased with the advent of ATM's.

Never allow anyone on your staff to service the ATM at night! No one needs the type of trouble this action can bring to your institution.

Barry - Were I talking about current procedures, I would never mention amounts, but I was talking about things that were done 20 years ago at an unnamed bank, at a time when things were very different than they are now.

We actually "contract out" our remote ATM's. Pay a monthly fee and our customers can use the ATM without service charge and we don't have to worry about refilling.

I am the one who originally posted this question, and I thank you for replying. I also understand the reluctance to share some info for security reasons and I don't blame you. I probably should have stated that I work for a bank and the reason for the question is I have concerns about the way we currently service our machines. I was looking for information from other institutions as to standard industry practices to support my proposal to management. Thanks again.