FirstOntario Rolls Out NCR APTRA Interactive Teller

• The Canadian financial institution FirstOntario Credit Union is rolling out NCR APTRA Interactive Teller ATMs with video-conferencing capabilities.

• The institution started installing its first Personal Assisted Tellers (PAT), with value-added advanced features, two years ago. They now allow visual interaction with banking advisors letting customers gather information they used to access only in branches. Typical options (deposits, cash withdrawals, cheque deposit) have been complemented with loan payments and appointments bookings for instance.

• By the end of the year, four other ATMs should be added to the six already available machines.

Source: Press release

• Canadian institutions too are rethinking the part to be played by branches, as they seek to improve their points of interaction and save time for more advanced services in branches. Video-conferencing might help them meet the ends arising from recent multichannel developments and reach areas where physical branches have not been (or could not be) implanted.

• Canada does show interest in virtual interactions: in addition to this announcement, it should soon release a no-envelope, intelligent deposit technology. It is also the only country to propose a virtual State currency, MintChip, associated with a dedicated digital wallet (see May 2012 Insight).

• NCR’s APTRA has been tested for a year in Australia (see August 2011 Insight) and introduced in the US in 2011, this rollout is yet another success. In February 2012, NCR entered the capital of uGenius (provider of video-banking solutions, with whom they had been working since 2011 on the development of the APTRA Interactive Teller).