Glenbrook's Jacqueline Chilton is attending this week's ATM, Debit & Prepaid Forum 2009 in Las Vegas. You can follow her reports from the conference over on our PaymentsViews.com sister site.

Bankrate.com has published results from a new study of bank fees showing that the costs of checking accounts have risen again this year to an all-time high. Bankrate's 2009 Checking Study details the average fees associated with using and maintaining an interest bearing account, including bounced check fees, ATM surcharges, and monthly services fees, plus tips on how to avoid them. READ MORE

INTERAC, Canada’s national debit network, and China Unionpay, China’s national bank card payment network, have announced the launch of a new service that will give China Unionpay cardholders traveling in Canada the ability to withdraw cash from ATMs of participating acquirers in Canada. READ MORE

PULSE, the Discover Financial Services business unit responsible for expanding global cash access for the company, has signed a long-term ATM acquiring agreement with TRIONIS, a European interbank processing network. TRIONIS is jointly owned by retail banks from nine European countries, the European Savings Banks Group, and First Data. READ MORE

MasterCard has announced that the MasterCard ATM Hunter application is now available as a free download on the Apple iTunes App Store. ATM Hunter lets iPhone and iPod touch users easily locate the nearest ATM no matter where in the world they are. READ MORE

NCR has launched "a new web-based service for easier and faster management and processing of envelope-free deposits at ATMs. With Intelligent Deposit ATMs already making up more than 70 percent of its 2008 U.S. SelfServ ATM orders, NCR believes its new service – NCR APTRA Deposit Gateway – will significantly help the next wave of financial institutions move to image-based ATMs. NCR APTRA Deposit Gateway is a web-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution that enables financial institutions to perform check image processing for envelope-free deposits made at the ATM." READ MORE

A working paper from the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City titled "Product Innovation and Firm Survival in A Network Industry" by Fumiko Hayaski and Zhu Wang studies product innovation and network survival in the U.S. ATM/debit card industry. "The findings suggest introducing the point of sale debit function in the mid 1980s played an important role driving the network consolidation."

Yesterday, NCR held an Analyst Day for investors - the presentation slides are available in an SEC filing made by the company.

Online Resources held an Investor Day yesterday - the presentation slides are available online.

MoneyGram International and Cardtronics have announced that MoneyGram money transfer and ExpressPayment urgent bill payment services will be offered through 2,250 advanced-function ATMs located at 7-Eleven, Inc. convenience stores in the U.S. beginning in late 2008. READ MORE

Privier , a charlotte, NC-based company, has announced ATMSend, calling it "the world's 1st 'no-card', 'no-bank account', cash-to-cash ATM remittance service ... aimed at targeting the U.S 106 million unbanked users." READ MORE

Surcharge-free ATM access is gaining in popularity among debit card issuers as they explore new ways to better serve cardholders, according to the 2008 Debit Issuer Study, commissioned by PULSE. Financial institutions also are increasingly offering debit rewards. READ MORE

Visa today unveiled a new look for the ATM kiosks to be installed specially for the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. According to Visa, "the artwork on the ATM kiosks has been inspired by Chinese culture and calligraphy. It uses blue and white brush strokes and traditional signature seal designs which are most recognizable on traditional Chinese porcelain vases." READ MORE

The PULSE debit network has launched its annual ATM & Debit Card Safety Awareness Month, encouraging consumers to review and practice safety tips when using their ATM/debit cards. This month, PULSE will release a series of safety tips for consumers to consider when traveling or making debit card purchases throughout the year. READ MORE

On the Digital Money Forum blog, Dave Birch posts about Harry Leinonen's paper titled "Payment Habits and Trends in the Changing E-Landscape 2010+" . From the foreward: "This book is the summary of a project undertaken in the Bank of Finland with the objective of discovering business and technological innovations, with which possibly new payment approaches could be introduced to the market and changes in future payment habits could be brought about. Payments habits have changed slowly in the past and therefore the time period selected for the study is 2010+, ranging to about 5–10 years beyond then. According to the findings we appear to be heading towards a new era in payment technology." READ MORE

Jessie Mangaliman and Mark Gomez write for the San Jose Mercury News about recent incidents of debit card skimming in Silicon Valley resulting in counterfeit cards being used to attack ATMs and get cash. "It's unclear how, but police said the thieves may have swapped a debit-card-reading machine at one or more of the store's checkout stands, or installed small, easily hidden skimming devices that collect a shopper's card number and personal identification codes"

Thomas Hawk blogs about using his bank's (Bank of America) ATMs: 'How come every single time I do an ATM transaction every ATM machine asks me what language I want? I want English. Why can't I set English as my default and never have an ATM ask me this question again?'

Ross Kerber writes for the Boston Globe that "last year the number of ATMs in the United States fell 9 percent, the first big drop since the devices were introduced in the 1970s."

Helsinki-based Valimo Wireless has introduced mobile signature technology that use mobile phones as a separate channel to add security to ATM transactions. For each transaction that relies on a magnetic stripe at the ATM, the cardholder would get a signing request to the mobile phone stating the amount and location of the ATM. The cardholder then returns a mobile signature via the mobile phone network.

Universal Air Travel Plan (UATP) has announced "a partnership with HomeATM ePayment Solutions, a global online payment solution and web security engineering firm. The partnership will initially offer an alternative payment option to the global commercial airline community."

An article by Alan O'Sullivan on the UK's This Is Money web site expresses consumer frustration's with the lack of complete security against fraudulent use of cards in the Chip and PIN system. He writes "large numbers of cash withdrawals are being made using cards without a security chip and it is the banks themselves that are allowing it to happen."

PULSE EFT Association, a Discover Financial Services company, has announced that it is implementing DebitProtect, a fraud detection and notification system, across its ATM/debit network.

Last Friday, Cardtronics filed a Form S-1 Registration Statement with the SEC for an initial public offering of its common stock. The company says it operates the world's largest network of ATMs - "approximately 31,000 ATMs, principally in national and regional merchant locations throughout the United States, the United Kingdom, and Mexico. Approximately 18,850 of the ATMs we operate are Company-owned and 12,125 are merchant-owned."

Diebold has announced that it has been granted five U.S. patents over the last 18 months "covering a variety of applications that enable mobile devices to interact directly with bank ATMs. These technologies extend beyond current mobile banking practices that permit using mobile phones to conduct online banking transactions such as transferring funds or checking account balances." READ MORE

Although branch banking still ranks first overall among consumer's usage, younger customers are continuing to choose the anonymity of their laptops over the human contact of a teller, according to a survey released today by the American Bankers Association.

Mercator Advisory Group has published a new report titled "The ATM Turns 40 - Time For a Change" that "evaluates the current ATM environment and the value chain of participants as it exists today and the future of this ubiquitous self-service device."

Dave Birch writes about the 40th anniversary of the ATM - noting that "John Shepherd-Baron, the former De La Rue executive credited with inventing that machine in 1967, now believes that the ubiquitous ATM will be made redundant within the next three to five years by the demise of paper cash." Birch concludes saying "I am now fascinated to determine the genesis of the modern ATM. Any -- and I mean any -- relevant details would be gratefully received."

Payment Alliance International has announced that it has acquired the principal operating assets of NetBank Payment Systems (NPS), adding over 8,500 ATMs to PAI's base to become the third largest ATM Processor in the United States.

Wells Fargo has announced that, starting this week, its customers in Central California can deposit cash and checks directly into ATMs without an envelope. Wells Fargo, which already has 400 Envelope-Free WebATM machines in Northern California, announced plans to add 825 more of the new machines by the end of the year.

DataTreasury Corporation has announced a worldwide licensing agreement with Diebold for the use of four of the company's financial transaction patents relating to "technologies involved in the electronic processing of checks and other financial instruments and include claims related to the capture, transmission, encryption, storing and retrieval of electronic images generated from these types of documents."

The Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City has just published the 2006 update to "A Guide to the ATM and Debit Card Industry" (PDF) by Fumiko Hayashi, Richard J. Sullivan, and Stuart E. Weiner. The authors introduce this update by saying that "the three years since the orginal book was published have been a very dynamic time in the industry with a number of important developments. Some trends and patterns have persisted or accelerated, while others have peaked or reversed. Still others have emerged for the first time. The purpose of this 2006 Update is to document these trends and patterns by updating the data we presented in the original book and to discuss their implications for the current and future state of the industry."