Say
you’re on vacation and spend more cash than you expected
prowling the French Quarter, visiting funky tourist shops in the
Keys or shopping Chicago’s Magnificent Mile. There are always
credit cards, but you can’t just slip one to a maitre’d
to assure a table by the window.
Fortunately, an ATM is never far away.
When you’re at work and have money coming
in, instead of going out, you can make deposits as well as withdrawals
at one of the ubiquitous machines. Recently a new technology has
surfaced—the ability to electronically image checks. This
clears the checks instantly for customers anxious to see them
appear in their accounts.
Cardtronics Incorporated in Houston, Texas,
is ready to implement this technology, thanks to recent legislation
passed in the House of Representatives in the form of the Check
Clearing for the 21st Century Act.
President and CEO Jack Antonini, a Ferris alumnus,
is no stranger to bringing new technology to the market. He headed
one of the first U.S. banks to offer online services to customers,
even before the Internet was widely available.
Born and raised in Grand Rapids, Antonini met
his wife, Susie, while they were in the third grade. He graduated
with a Bachelor of Science in Business and Accounting degree from
Ferris.
Since Ferris, Antonini has built an impressive
resume, which includes holding CEO positions at Globeset, Inc.
(Austin, Texas), San Antonio-based USAA Federal Savings Bank and
Cardtronics, in Houston, as of this past February.
Antonini took time from his busy schedule to
talk about Cardtronics and the new technology available.
C&G:
How would you describe what it is that Cardtronics does?
JA: We’re a deployer
of ATMs. We sell them to other companies, which then sell them
to banks, convenience stores and similar places. Also, we sell
ATMs directly to various stores and companies wanting to buy and
process through us.
We own our own machines, as well, putting them
in major corporate partners’ hands such as Exxon Mobil,
Phillips 66 and Sunoco. The large corporate accounts equal about
50-55 percent of the business. It’s the area we have been
emphasizing here for the last couple of years.
About 35-40 percent of our business comes from
dealing with people we sell equipment to and do the processing
for. Then, the selling of ATM equipment represents roughly 10
percent of our business.
C&G: The Check Clearing
for the 21st Century Act recently passed the House of Representatives.
When it becomes law, how is that going to affect your business,
and could you also explain a little bit about that legislation?
JA: What’s really unique
about this act is that it gives legal standing to an image of
a check.
Banks go through this massive proof of deposit
operation, actually taking the millions of checks they get every
day and sending the physical documents to either a federal bank
or a clearing house. Then the check is sent back to the original
bank it was drawn on.
Electronically what can happen now is a bank
will take those checks, still handling them much the same way,
except every so often, they will run them through an image scanner,
allowing them to process the checks.
We will be able to do that same thing with an
ATM image of a check. While the customer is standing at the ATM,
we will electronically send the check back to the bank it was
drawn on, clear it for the customer and then give the customer
credit for it in his or her account.
It’s really quite a neat arrangement,
making it much faster and easier and dramatically lowering the
cost for the banking industry.
C&G: Are there any limitations
to this act for either the banks or customers?
JA: For checks that are deposited
at a bank, it’s still going to require the bank to handle
the paper item. Also, checks that come in the mail still need
to be handled by a person, which takes longer.
With this legislation combined with the new
technology, when a customer deposits a check at an ATM, it will
actually print the check right on the receipt as a small image.
It’s a dramatic change for a banking industry used to processing
paper checks.
C&G: What about security?
JA: If there’s somebody
trying to forge a document, banks can catch it faster with imaging.
They can compare an electronic image to the original document
to see whether or not it’s been altered. It should actually
improve security.
C&G: USAA was one of the
few banks in 1995 to allow customers to use their personal computers
to gain access to information. How did you get involved so early
on with that kind of technology?
JA: We were trying to find
a way to allow banking to be more convenient for our customers,
recognizing that we didn’t have branches.
In late 1992, there were people experimenting
with advanced telephones that had a screen on the phone, almost
like a computer, but that didn’t look as though it was going
to be robust enough to allow people to do everything they wanted.
We decided to really pursue alternative means.
Although the Internet was not commercially viable
back then, we found a software company that would build software
to our specifications, allowing our customers to access their
USAA bank accounts. They could also transfer money in and out
of our bank, order checks and pay their bills.
In 1993, we put together a network through AT&T,
which allowed our customers to dial in toll-free so they could
log-in their PC and bank from home. By 1995, there were several
thousand customers using this network system.
C&G: What brought you to
Ferris?
JA: Two things really: my brother
and the number of Business courses offered. My brother, who was
the first one in our family to attend college, went to Ferris.
After high school, I applied and got accepted
to the University of Michigan, Michigan State, U of M Dearborn
and many others.
What I really liked about Ferris, though, was
that I was able to take more Business courses earlier on in my
college career, allowing me to see if I wanted to pursue a career
in business or not.
C&G: What do you still
hope
to accomplish for yourself and for Cardtronics?
JA: I look at what we managed
to do at USAA—growing it from a $40 million to a $10 billion
company. Part of the appeal of being at Cardtronics is that it’s
a good company with a good strong revenue base and a nice position
in its unique market niche. I was looking for something that had
a unique competitive advantage or strategic opportunity and found
those things at Cardtronics.
I’m the kind of person who’s always
looking for a challenge—I’m not comfortable just sitting
around doing nothing. Fortunately, I have a wonderful, supportive
wife who has helped me tremendously. And now there are a lot of
wonderful people at Cardtronics, who I really enjoy working with.
It’s a lot of fun.
