CHINA Banking Corp. (ChinaBank) is the first bank in Southeast Asia to purchase the new SelfServ ATM units developed and manufactured by NCR Corp.

In a statement, NCR said the ATM units are designed to reduce environmental impact while increasing customer-service efficiency.

“ATM availability is one of the key priorities for banks in the region, and the NCR SelfServ family with its ‘self-healing’ capability addresses this need,” NCR said in the statement. “This new ATM family recovers automatically from software failures without intervention, cutting down recovery time previously ranging from three to four hours, to just ten or 15 minutes, therefore ensuring higher ATM availability.”

ChinaBank vice president and chief operating officer Ricardo Chua said in the statement that “…we are committed to provide fast, reliable and convenient access for our customers. NCR SelfServ is helping us deliver on our commitment by setting new benchmarks in availability, ease of use and functionality. As one of the first financial institutions in the Philippines to include this new generation of ATMs in our network, we will now be able to offer the benefits of NCR SelfServ, which confirms our commitment of offering the best banking experience to our customers.”

NCR vice president for financial industry marketing Brian Bailey said, “The NCR SelfServ family reflects a key NCR strategy to link the consumer experience across the ATM, the Internet and mobility.”

Bailey added that, “Clearly, consumers want self-service banking to be convenient, easy to use, secure and always available when and where they want. As consumers do more through the ATM channel, it becomes imperative for financial institutions to ensure their ATM network is constantly up and running,” citing customer needs as the driving force behind their innovation in the area of ATM technology.

According to the statement, “over half of ATM downtime is due to low-level maintenance tasks—often performed by branch staff—such as replacing receipt rolls and clearing cards or paper jams.” Because of this, the SelfServ ATMs come with “intuitive interactive graphic operator panels” that “allows staff to fix more faults the first time and do so more quickly, leading to better availability.”

The SelfServ units include NCR’s patented two-sided thermal (2ST) receipt printers “that reduce the amount of paper consumed,” as well as “larger paper rolls and dual receipt roll dispensers [that] also include autochange functionality,” according to product information on the ATM unit.

This new family of ATMs “is designed to deliver the most advanced services, including bill payments and no-envelope intelligent cash and check deposits, while reducing environmental impact,” NCR said. The SelfServ ATMs are also “the only ATM family to feature protected universal service bus [USB] technology. This means that modules needed to deliver future services on ATMs can be added quickly, without compromising the security of the ATM.”

“As 2D barcode technology emerges, bill payments and other transactions that use this technology can be handled on new modules available on SelfServ,” NCR said. “Technologies such as contactless card and mobile payment systems can also be easily integrated with SelfServ ATMs to improve convenience for consumers and create revenue-generation opportunities for financial institutions and other ATM deployers.”

NCR Corp. is a global technology company headquartered in Dayton, Ohio, that develops and manufactures assisted and self-service solutions and comprehensive support services that address the needs of retail, financial, travel, healthcare, hospitality, gaming and public, sector organizations in more than 100 countries.

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CHINA Banking Corp. (ChinaBank) is the first bank in Southeast Asia to purchase the new SelfServ ATM units developed and manufactured by NCR Corp.