Datos Insights’ Global ATM Intelligence Service covers eight categories of ATM software. Three are required for the machine to function: Every ATM must be connected to a host server, which must run terminal driving software, and every ATM carries application software and an operating system. The other five are discretionary, and many terminals run none of them. For each category, the software comes from one of three places: an independent supplier, the manufacturer that built the terminal, or a proprietary solution built for the deployer, usually in-house.
Vendor shares are distributed unevenly across the categories, and some categories are led by suppliers whose main business lies outside ATMs. Across the discretionary five, a bank or an independent ATM deployer (IAD) may own the terminal. Application software must be present on every terminal, since it is the layer that delivers the transaction, driving the screen the customer sees and the card reader and dispenser behind it. Monitoring software is optional, but at 97% of terminals, it has the highest adoption of any discretionary category.
Deployers Often Use Solutions From Hardware Manufacturers
For both functions, deployers commonly use a solution from a hardware manufacturer: 77% of ATMs for application software and 60% for monitoring. No other category in the research is led by manufacturers. Much is vendor-native, but manufacturers also supply other vendors’ hardware.
Application software is also the most concentrated category: Its three largest suppliers – Diebold Nixdorf, NCR Atleos, and Hyosung TNS – are ATM manufacturers. Together, they supply the application software running on two-thirds of the terminals.
Independent suppliers provide terminal driving software for 67% of terminals, with one supplier alone covering just under half of the ATMs in the research.
The operating system is more concentrated and is the least contested category: Microsoft accounts for 96% of terminals, and Linux, mostly in Brazil, for the remainder.
For CRM And Cash Forecasting, Deployers Build Rather Than Buy
Cash forecasting and customer relationship management (CRM) software are more likely to be proprietary than any other category.
Of the ATMs that use CRM software, 68% run a solution developed for the deployer. Among those that use cash forecasting software, the figure is 57%. Banks account for 91% of the ATMs, on which proprietary CRM has been put in place, and 81% of those running proprietary cash forecasting.
They are also the two least used. Deployers accounting for 49% of ATMs run no CRM software, and 34% run no cash forecasting software. For these two functions, a deployer is more likely to develop its own solution, or go without one, than to buy.
Independent suppliers hold a smaller share of CRM than of any other category, at 8% of the ATMs that use it. What they hold sits in a few markets. Italy is the clearest, where 59% of the ATMs using CRM software run Auriga’s solution, more than the proprietary systems it competes with.
North America runs against the proprietary pattern in cash forecasting: Of the North American ATMs that use cash forecasting software, 79% run an independent solution, mostly Fiserv’s Integrated Currency Manager. That figure is driven by the U.S., at 86%. Of the Canadian ATMs that use cash forecasting software, 64% run a proprietary one.
The suppliers show the split. The largest independents in remote software distribution are Microsoft, HP, and IBM, and in security software Symantec, GMV, and McAfee – most of them firms whose main business is general enterprise IT rather than ATMs. In the monitoring and CRM categories, the leading independents are ATM and payments specialists: Fiserv, ESQ, Auriga, Banksoft, and KAL.
The independent share is also fragmented in a way the aggregate hides. No single independent supplier is large: Among the ATMs that use remote software distribution, Microsoft is the largest independent at 8%, behind Diebold Nixdorf at 18%. Among those using security software, Symantec leads the independents at 18%, behind NCR Atleos at 23%.
Distributing software updates and defending endpoints against attacks are not problems exclusive to the ATM. A deployer that already addresses them across its estate tends to extend what it runs rather than buy something ATM specific. Because both categories are handled by the same part of the organization, they tend to be solved in the same way and often by the same class of supplier.
Although independents lead both categories, neither leads outright; hardware manufacturers hold roughly a third of each. Two regions depart further. In the Asia-Pacific, hardware manufacturers supply two-thirds of the remote software distribution capability.
In Western Europe, independents lead in security software, but much of that share belongs to GMV, whose Checker product is written specifically for ATMs. The largest single supplier in the region is a hardware manufacturer.
Discretionary Categories Separate Banks From IADS
Across the three required categories, banks and IADs end up in much the same place: Application software is manufacturer-supplied on 76% of bank terminals and 82% of IAD ones, and monitoring software, though discretionary, runs on 98% and 94%. That is not a foregone conclusion, since no category here is served by a single supplier. In the discretionary five, they part company.
The divergence is widest in dedicated security software, used on 86% of bank ATMs and 36% of IAD terminals, and in CRM, on 63% and 14%. Remote software distribution runs at 84% and 58%, and cash forecasting at 72% and 50%.
Because the bank sector is far larger than the IAD sector, banks account for most proprietary deployments, even though an IAD that uses CRM is more likely to have had it built.
One explanation covers both ends of that range. A bank connects ATM activity to a branch network, a card portfolio, and a mobile channel, and extends a security and patching estate that already exists. An IAD runs the ATM estate as a business, with no wider customer record to feed and no estate to extend, and must justify each purchase against the ATM business. In India, the division is absolute: None of the country’s IAD terminals runs CRM software, while 53% of Indian bank ATMs do.
The split is strong enough to distort regional figures. North America appears to have low CRM penetration, with 58% of terminals running none, but that reflects a fleet that is 55% IAD; its banks are the highest adopters anywhere, at 87%.
Opportunities Remain, But Are Not Evenly Spread
In the required categories, there is little to contest: Every terminal already runs the software, and any change means displacing an incumbent. The openings are in the discretionary five and are not evenly spread. Where a category is largely proprietary, the competitor is the deployer’s development team, and a bank that has built its own system is less likely to replace it.
The clearest opening is dedicated security software on IAD fleets. Almost two-thirds run none, against 14% of bank terminals, with no incumbent to displace and no proprietary system to argue against.
Having no wider IT estate to extend is precisely why IADs have not bought this software, so any case for it must stand on the ATM business.
