ATM stands for Automated Teller Machine and allows customers to access their bank
accounts for cash withdrawals, check account balance and purchase pre paid mobile phone credit. It often provides one of the best possible official exchange rates for foreign travelers and also widely used for this purpose.
ATMs have proven themselves to be an indispensable part of the global banking and financial institutional infrastructure. Almost all banks offer ATM facilities to their customers to make banking easy and efficient. It is one of the amazing machines made by the humans. Thousands of ATMs are available and there is no hard international or government totaling about the complete number of ATM used worldwide. Technology brings every one closer and on the other hand ATM provides money on time to fulfill their needs. ATM is a machine and like other machines it requires software to run. Many companies developed ATM software for the banks with the help of their expertise software developers and trained team members. They designing and developing ATM software and applications which are users friendly and easily handled by the banks as well.
A vast number of ATMs worldwide use Microsoft Windows OS, primarily Windows XP professional or Windows XP Embedded. However some small firms still uses old version of Windows OS. With the onset of Windows Microsoft OS, the software applications have the ability to become more intelligent. This has created a new breed of ATM applications commonly referred to as a programmable application. Remote monitoring software is also used in ATM to make it more securable and simpler. It monitors all the activities or transactions and send immediate alert after every transaction is processed. With the move to a more standardized software base, banks and financial institutions have been increasingly interested in the ability to pick and choose the software applications that drive their equipments.
Some ATM software also runs on XFS platform and Linux OS. Most of the manufacturers provide software packages that implement all the protocols designed by the developers by keeping all the needs of the users and banks as well. As the ATMs standard rises with the industry standard computing environments, concern about the ATMs software security also rises.
ATM software manufacturers give first priority to the security system of ATM and also provide a practical demonstration of a number of security systems. There are number of security must be keep in mind while designing and developing ATM software such as customer identity security, transactional secrecy and operational secrecy etc. After developing complete software, manufacturer test for its security and operations for better experience usage. Today ATM services become the need for customers so the banking service interface needs to be considered to provide best service in this phase.