FleetBoston to Web-enable ATMs, revamp technology

From...

By Lucas Mearian

ANAHEIM, California (IDG) -- Playing off the banking industry's customer-centric mantra, FleetBoston Financial Corp. announced last week that it plans to Web-enable its automated teller machines (ATM) in order to extend the reach of existing online services to its customers.

The project, which Fleet expects to cost tens of millions of dollars, is in line with what other executives at the Bank Administration Institute's Retail Delivery conference here say is necessary to grow in the future: using technology to integrate existing services.

ATMs are Fleet's highest touch point, accounting for 25 million transactions per month. Meanwhile, the Boston-based bank's online banking site, HomeLink, has grown to more than 2 million registered users.

IDG.net INFOCENTER Computerworld main page Computerworld's topic-oriented communities Computerworld's IT career center Free daily newsletters Related IDG.net Stories Study finds banks miss the mark online Citibank ATM outage leaves customers without service SafeDebit is NYCE's answer to smart cards Features PC World.com Product Finder Mastering e-commerce by degrees Fast-track training puts nontechies in IT jobs Visit an IDG site Choose a site: IDG.net CIO Computerworld Darwin Dummies.com GamePro.com The Industry Standard ITWorld.com InfoWorld.com JavaWorld LinuxWorld Macworld Online Network World Fusion PC World Publish.com UnixInsider IDG.net search

Nandita Bakhshi, vice president and director of Fleet's self-service and ATM banking division, said that through many acquisitions over the past decade, "we've gained a network that's very disparate, made up of all types of ATMs of varying ages. The new architecture will provide a simple experience for our customers regardless of the type of ATM."

San Francisco-based Wells Fargo & Co. and Charlotte, North Carolina-based Bank of America Corp. are piloting similar programs.

Fleet's Web-enabled ATMs will let customers access and print 30-day account statements, review investment account information from Fleet's Quick & Reilly investment subsidiary in New York and pay credit card and utility bills.

Fleet's ATMs, developed by NCR Corp. and North Canton, Ohio-based Diebold Inc., currently run on two distinct software platforms. To tie the two legacy systems together to share customer information in real time, the bank is using an open platform called Aptra, developed by Dayton, Ohio-based NCR. Bank customers will interface with HTML screens, using touchpads and screens. The bank will also move the systems off its mainframe architecture and onto its Windows NT Web servers, an architecture that it says is robust enough to handle the upgrade.

Bakhshi said Fleet will be able to connect ATMs to back-end systems through dedicated IP virtual private networks. The bank plans to pilot the system on 200 machines in New York and Boston in the first half of next year. It currently has more than 4,000 ATM machines on the East Coast.

Fleet's effort to Web-enable its ATMs is expected to eventually pay for itself, Bakhshi said, because the bank will no longer have to develop separate services for different platforms and "will now be able to leverage developments on our HomeLink site and partition it over to the ATM side."