The futurists predicted that ATM cards will soon be a thing of the past, and they were correct.
Banks and ATM service providers are racing to deploy new technology machines that will offer bank customers cardless access to their cash.
JPMorgan Chase has rolled out a few hundred ATMs that require only a smartphone to carry out transactions.
Wells Fargo plans to offer cardless access on its entire fleet of 13,000 ATMs.
Payment Alliance International, the largest provider of ATM services in the U.S., plans to provide cardless access on 25,000 machines by the end of 2017.
Equipping ATMs to go cardless isn’t cheap but will save on mailing replacement cards.
It is expected that the card-free ATMs will better protect against fraud. Cases of card skimming in which thieves’ plant a device inside the ATM’s card slot to steal bank information, have increased in recent years.
The wireless connection between a phone and an ATM should be more secure, though some early cases of fraud have already cropped up.