Contriguted by Oberthur Feerica
Despite digital payment growth, cash remains important across much of Asia. For many customers, particularly outside major urban centres, the ATM remains an essential part of everyday banking. Keeping physical banking sustainable means ensuring ATMs can be placed where customers need them, while managing the security and operational risks of maintaining this infrastructure.
Sustainability here extends beyond operating costs, including maintaining ATM availability, limiting disruption, and managing physical infrastructure carefully over time. Physical attacks on ATMs, even when relatively infrequent, have a lasting impact, requiring banks to replace ATMs earlier than planned. This increases costs and leads to greater use of materials, transport, and resources, while reducing service availability for customers.
Across the region, most banks outsource cashin-transit and ATM servicing, while some continue to operate internal cash-in-transit functions for branch and ATM replenishment. Either way, banks remain responsible for outcomes. Service continuity, security standards, and broader sustainability considerations rest with the bank, even where daily operations are carried out by third-party providers.
Intelligent Banknote Neutralisation Systems, commonly called IBNS, reduce the impact of physical ATM attacks by permanently staining banknotes if an ATM is physically attacked. When stolen cash cannot be used, the incentive to attack ATMs is reduced. Experience from parts of Europe, where IBNS has been in use for many years, shows that this approach can improve protection of ATM infrastructure and lead to more stable operation of cash networks. Improved security through IBNS also enables banks to place ATMs in higher-risk locations, expanding access to banking services.
IBNS also supports wider sustainability goals. By reducing serious damage to ATMs, it can help extend the working life of equipment and avoid unnecessary replacement. For banks that operate their own internal
cash-in-transit services, lower exposure to cash loss may support more efficient operating models. In suitable risk environments, this can include greater use of lighter, soft-sided one-man-operated vehicles rather than fully armoured fleets, helping to improve fuel efficiency and reduce resource use.
Banks that outsource cash-in-transit can influence outcomes in a similar way. By encouraging or selecting service providers that use IBNS-protected cash handling, banks can support safer and more efficient transport models through supplier standards and governance. As banks continue to balance physical and digital channels, IBNS provides a practical means of protecting ATM infrastructure, expanding service to underserved areas, supporting sustainability objectives, and helping to ensure that physical banking remains accessible and fit for the future.
About Oberthur Feerica
Oberthur Ferrica designs and manufactures intelligent cash protection systems and security solutions for the Cash-In-Transit, ATM & Retail markets throughout the world. Its systems use technology to detect an attempted attack or theft, and protect cash by permanently marking it as stolen, rendering it valueless. It protects cash and the way that the cash is protected will reduce attacks and thereby reducing the physical risk to cash in transit operatives and the general public.
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Contributed by Oberthur Feerica
