Fun facts about ATMs

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PIN keypad

PIN keypad with EMV card

With the holidays here it is time to be a little more light hearted. Here is some fun ATM trivia!

There is approximately 1 ATM for every 3,000 people in the world. ATMs are found most commonly in the United States, Canada, Europe, China and Japan. China has the most ATMs of any nation at over half a million (and counting) and everyday 280 new ATMs come online around the world. Japan has highest density of ATMs in the world followed by Spain, South Korea, the US and Canada. South Korea has the highest ATM per capita in the world at 282 per 1,000 people.

The northernmost ATM in the world is in Longyearbyen on Svalbard Island, Norway. You may have heard the name, this is where the Global Seed Vault is located. The southernmost (and remotest) ATM is located in McMurdo Station on Antarctica. It is run by Wells Fargo and is serviced every two years (they have a spare in case it breaks down). ATMs can also be found on many cruise ships and on US Navy vessels. The world’s highest ATM is in the Khunjerab Pass in Pakistan near the Chinese border at an elevation of 15,397 feet. It is owned by the National Bank of Pakistan and is designed to work in temperatures as low as -40 Celsius.

In Canada and Australia ATMs are known as bank machines or money machines. In New Zealand they are cash points. In the United Kingdom they are known as a hole in the wall while in continental Europe they are called bancomats.

The most popular day for ATM usage is Friday. The average withdraw is $60, a pittance since ATMs can hold up to $100,000 (though they usually only contain about $20,000). ATMs can do more than just dispense cash. They can also add minutes to prepaid cell phones, allow users to purchase concert tickets, movie tickets, gold, lotto tickets, stamps, train tickets, gift certificates and allow for donations to charity.

The first ATM installed in a grocery store was at a Dahl’s Food in Iowa in 1975. Iowa, go figure.

US law mandates that all drive-up ATMs must have braille on the keypad. While that law may leave some heads being scratched ATMs were prohibited from charging surcharges by US law until 1996 and that is one law that most people wish would get back on the books.

The most common OS that is run on ATMs is Windows XP. That continued even after XP was retired by Microsoft for PCs. India uses LINUX for its ATMs. Egypt’s Banque du Caire was the first nation to utilize wireless connectivity via cell phone service with ATMs in 1994. The US didn’t get a wireless ATM until 1998. Modems were used to connect to the Internet.

There are several nations around the world where you had better bring cash as ATMs are hard to find, if not impossible. They are Chad, Ethiopia, Haiti, Myanmar (Burma) and Sierra Leone and they have the fewest number of ATMs per 100,000 people in the world. The same can be said for North Korea which has two ATMs that only dispense Chinese currency (when they are working at least).