Paper money in the US measures a sneeze over .1 mm in thickness according to one source, and .0043" according to another. Going by the .1 mm measurement, that yields 254 bills/inch. The source claiming .0043" says 233 new bills (uncompressed) in one inch. The cash cans held around 12" of bills, so the range is 2796 - 3048. To make life simple, let’s use 2900.
2900 x $20 = $58K x however many cans the machine holds (I’ve seen as large as four). Small, freestanding machines and kiosk ATMs will hold less than their larger through-the-bank-wall kin.
The smallest denomination note that most ATM’s in the UK will give out is £10. This is limiting the supply of £5 notes in circulation. This is because the majority of people now draw their money out from ATM’s. If they specifically require £5 notes they have to go into a bank and probably wait ten minutes before they are served. So lots of £10’s and £20’s floating around, but not many fivers.
For a while a few years ago, Chase Bank in New York experimented with “check cashing” ATMs in some of their branches. There was no actual check cashing involved, but you could take out any amount of money from the account in increments as low as 5 cents (no pennies). I guess the idea was that a customer could deposit a check and withdraw the same amount (+/- a few cents). There was one of these machines among the half dozen in a branch near me (and none in the other branch near me).
Sometimes when I happened on that machine, I’d withdraw, for no particular reason, some odd amount of money, say $67.45 rather than $60.00. After a while, the machine still had the coin dispensing slot, but only dispensed $20 “yuppie trading stamps” like its sisters surrounding it.
Which is great IMO, the lower the amount, the better the chance it will run out. And the banks generally charge flat fees for withdrawals, so you do yourself over in bank fees if you’re constantly taking out small amounts.
For the record, there are many ATMs that DO NOT get anywhere near that much money.
I know of ATMs that never see more than $10K at one time.
Banks would rather have their money earning interest, and some facilities will only move $45K in a month… so the bank sends out cash handlers once a week, and accepts that from time to time they’ll run out or have to do an occasional mid-week emergency fill as a cost of doing business.
Many ATM models don’t get the 4 cans that Dances referred to upthread. I know of some that have a 4-can capacity, but only wind up with 1 can actually installed.
Canadian ATMs used to give out $10s. I remember getting $10s out no more than seven years ago, but now they’ve completely stopped. I’ve noticed $10s getting correspondingly scarcer, but not half-dollar or American $2 scarce.
Any modern ATM is connected online (to check that your account isn’t already empty, for example) and will send in a warning when it’s getting low on bills. And, of course, the control room can query the ATM at any time to check on the remaining supply of bills, number & amount of deposits made, etc. A well-run bank ought to be monitoring their ATMs and dealing with this before they run out.
There can be occasional spurts of activity at an ATM where it will be emptied before a armored car refill can be scheduled, but when you hear “oh, that ATM is always empty by Friday”, that’s an indication of a poorly-run bank.
Back in the late 90s I worked in the data center of a locally run bank. Every fifth Saturday or so, I had to spend the morning babysitting the ATMs. There was a program that allowed us to see not only the amount of money left, but also if there were other issues than low money and when the last activity was. If there was no activity in an expected period, someone had to go out and check the ATM. In my experience, it is much more likely for an ATM to run out of paper and ink for receipts than it is for it to run out of money. This is at least partly due to the fact that they generally indicate money level more clearly than ink level.
It is in the best interest for the bank to have the ATMs up and running. Every transaction handled by the ATM is one less that is handled by a live teller. The live teller transactions cost a lot more. There is a charge the bank pays for transactions on other bank’s ATM, but those are still less costly than using a teller. There was no way that the bank could have handled all their transactions via tellers.
I once interviewed for a job servicing ATMs and had the opportunity to see the inside of a few different models. Really interesting stuff. The guy who showed me the ATMs told me pretty much the same thing you mentioned–that loading the machine with twenties maximizes the money available from the machine.
He also told me that loading the machine with twenties reduces chances for error in loading the machine. Something about the ATM thinking twenties are supposed to be in a can that’s actually full of tens and rejecting the bills as they come out of the canister. (As you can see, I didn’t take the job so I don’t know the details.)
I’m guessing that if the ATM sees that tens are coming out of a bin that was supposed to be loaded with 20s it’ll stop drawing from that bin. Then the machine’s capacity is decreased significantly. Easier to load every canister with 20s.
Of course, that’s a WAG. danceswithcats would know more than I would. Really cool tech in those machines, though.
Being able to detect the actual denomination of bill being dispensed from a mis-coded bin is NOT a feature in all ATMs, I assure you.
I once knew a cash handler who inserted an improperly coded bin.
It was coded for $2 bills but was, of course, full of twenties.
Guess what happens when a machine that thinks it has $2 bills in responds to a request for $60? Stupid thing dispenses 30 bills.
Ah, well, like I said danceswithcats would know more than I would, but it was explained to me that the IR sensors used to verify that only one bill is dispensed at a time can also be programmed to detect the bill’s denomination, as is cited in a 1998 NY Times article here.
I’m sure, though, that it’s only on specific higher-end machines. The firm I was interviewing with specialized in the refurb of older machines in primarily foreign markets.
My emphasis. The customer’s bank pass that charge on to the user. There is also often a fee charged directly to the customer by the ATM’s bank, too. Ain’t it grand?
Management issues aside, not all ATMs are live. When you go outside the banking facility proper (lobby, through-wall, and drive up kiosk) to convenience stores, bars, and such, the machines are often on a dial-up connection to the hosting network. Querying the machine wouldn’t be necessary, if you think about it. Although the units I serviced and installed didn’t have the feature, it would be more efficient to have the machine send a report when x$ have dispensed since last refresh, and use those accumulated reports to track usage trends.
In all fairness, my firsthand knowledge base is limited to the Olivetti, Docutel, and Inter Innovation machines on which I was trained. It is quite possible that technology has evolved to include that feature, as people doing stupid things is a given.
