NAC 2025: NFC for retail ATMs
Tap-and-go transactions have made life easier for millions of consumers in the last few years, but are ATMs getting their fair share of this customer convenience?
The status of tap-and-go, which requires a near field communication (NFC) reader on an ATM, was explored during a panel discussion at the recent NAC conference and expo at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. The session was titled, “NFC for retail ATMs: Is it time to begin rolling out tap & go?”
ATM operators are being driven to embrace NFC by retail POS, which currently surpasses ATMs in tap-to-pay adoption by a considerable margin. From the ATM operator’s perspective, NFC integration requires an investment in the necessary hardware and software.
NFC adoption on the rise
Fortunately, independent ATM deployers (IADs) recognize the need to embrace NFC and are responding in kind.
“As more and more processors have certified these (NFC integration) kits, the growth has been pretty steady,” said panelist Scott Weaver, vice president of sales for retail ATMs at Genmega, an ATM manufacturer. “The adoption of the cash transactions on ATMs have been really strong…It’s been sort of shocking to see how many of these kits are going out the door now.”
In order to add NFC to an ATM, there are certain hardware and software requirements.
Panelist Sal Salpietro, president of ATM Universal Processors LLC, an ATM independent sales organization, advised his listeners to make sure they have the necessary control board before buying an NFC kit from a manufacturer. “Before they buy it, they need to understand that they need the newer board,” he said.
Weaver of Genmega acknowledged that ATM operators are concerned about the costs of these investments, especially with the recent government tariffs, but he noted that in many instances, it’s the location owners (the ATM operators’ customers) making the requests. And as the volume of NFC readers increases, he said, ATM manufacturers may adjust prices.
Bank support varies
Financial institutions that issue credit cards have supported tap-and-go on their own ATMs, but not necessarily on general access ATMs that independent ATM operators operate.
In such cases, when a customer uses their credit card at a non-bank ATM, the transaction gets declined.
Bruce Renard, NAC executive director, said this could be an anti-competitive move on the part of the financial institutions.
“It sounds to me like we need to look into some kind of anti-competitive action for the way the banks are setting up their situation,” Renard said. “They’re allowing the tap-and-go to work on the bank machine and not on our machines…It sounds like they’re making it really difficult to impossible for us to do it in the same way that’s happening (with bank ATMs).”
Weaver said he is not sure that the banks are intentionally creating a different scenario for non-bank ATMs.
“I don’t know how much of it is nefarious versus banks just not understanding some of the steps that they have to take with various processors with the networks to enable things,” he said. “So I think a lot of this is just education with the whole community about getting this enabled.”
Renard said NAC can help educate banks about the need to support non-bank ATMs.
“That’s fantastic feedback because that is also something NAC can absolutely dive into and try to help facilitate the right parties getting together,” Renard said.
In addition to supporting their own ATMs, banks have also made a concerted effort to support tap-and-go retail POS transactions. The fact that banks are supporting NFC use at retail POS but not non-bank ATMs is yet another area of confusion for ATM customers. A customer may find they can use tap-and-go at a store but not at an ATM that is located nearby.
Retail adoption also took time
When retailers began introducing tap-and-go several years ago, it took time before it became widely available.
“The same experience happened…most of the stores I went to did not have an NFC reader,” said panelist Chuck Schwab, vice president of product strategy at PAI Powered by Brinks, which provides ATM management services. It took time for many retailers to offer the capability.
Schwab said tap-and-go capabilities still vary among retail locations. Whether or not the NFC is enabled at a particular retail location will depend on the bank issuing the credit card.
“The small banks and credit unions, they don’t understand,” Schwab said. “The level of sophistication is going to vary widely…A lot of that is dependent on the bank or the credit union. The issuer of the card must understand the dynamics of what they need to do.”
“Adoption will continue,” Weaver said, when asked if ATM operators should invest in NFC currently versus waiting for more card issuers to support the capability. “The issuers will continue to turn this on as customers say, ‘I want to be able to use this.’”
Another factor motivating operators to invest in tap-to-pay is to remove the likelihood of ATM skimming, Weaver said. “For me it was all about reducing skimming.”
In addition to reducing skimming, Schwab said NFC reduces transaction friction.
Schwab also noted during the question-and-answer period that tap-and-go allows customers to retain cash usage.
“I think what we’re doing is saying we’re going to try and retain users of cash because if you don’t have it they’re just going to walk up to the counter and use their phone and tap; they know that works,” he said. “We try to retain cash usage, not magically create more cash usage.”
“Generally speaking, where it is deployed and enabled, we see a lot of the same positive activity,” he said.
The adoption of NFC cards by consumers is one of the factors driving the growth of contactless payments, along with speed and convenience, attractive rewards and incentives, improved customer experience, and safety concerns. according to a 2025 research report released by Precedence Research. The contactless payment market is expected to expand at a 16% combined annual growth rate from 2024 to 2034.
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