NCR and Walgreens ‘Significantly’ Expand ATM Agreement

NCR said its ATMs will soon be in nearly every Walgreens location in the country.

The enterprise technology company announced in a Tuesday (Feb. 21) news release that it had “significantly” expanded its agreement with the pharmacy chain, a deal that will see NCR add 1,300 of its Allpoint+ cash-accepting ATMs to Walgreen stores.

“At many of the ATMs, NCR has also added the ability for consumers to purchase bitcoin at the ATM through NCR’s LibertyX platform,” the company said in the release. “Further, NCR Pay360, a mobile platform that allows consumers to send and receive cash from a variety of sources with a simple code, will be enabled across NCR’s Walgreens portfolio.”

The news comes weeks after NCR released earnings figures that showed that its access points in the payments and network segment rose 24% year over year thanks to growth in its ATM and merchant acquiring terminal business.

The company’s ATM-as-a-Service unit gained 226% year over year to more than 14,200, fueled by demand in India and slight growth in the U.S.

NCR’s arrangement with Walgreens follows a similar expansion deal with convenience store chain Circle K last year.

ATMs still have a place in the world of digital banking, even as the number of machines declines.

While consumers are increasingly turning to digital tools to conduct banking, PYMNTS research found that 41% of banking customers still use ATMs for some transactions. And as the number of ATMs drops, the ones that remain offer increased services, such as cash recycling, which lets ATMs operate with fewer human work hours needed to keep them in play.

These ATMs can take deposited cash and process it to disburse for future withdrawals. By contrast, traditional ATMs feature a single cassette that holds cash for withdrawals, and another that keeps deposited currency.

“That necessitates constant maintenance, with personnel traveling around to ATMs to swap out cassettes and staff having to process both the deposit and withdrawal cassettes at a central location,” PYMNTS wrote.

Meanwhile in the United Kingdom, ATM withdrawals are on the upswing for the first time in more than a decade.

According to the building society Nationwide, which has a network of over 1,200 ATMs in the country, cash withdrawals rose by 19% in 2022, the first yearly increase in 13 years.

While the 30.2 million withdrawals nationwide recorded is still below pre-pandemic levels, Nationwide said the increase represents people’s preference for cash as a means of budgeting.

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