Excerpt from ATM DEBIT & NEWS
Thursday, April 21, 2005

Two ATM independent sales organizations are largely responsible for a consolidation of the nonbank ATM business.

Houston-based Cardtronics Inc. and Portland, Ore.-based TRM Corp., have become the top two off-premise ATM deployers mainly through acquisitions of large ATM portfolios. The two firms combined control 46,261 ATMs. That number accounts for about 17.6% of the 263,000 off-premise ATMs in the U.S. and 12.1% of the total 383,000 ATMs in the nation, according to ATM Debit & News' EFT Data Book 2005 estimates.

TRM's recent earning report shows a significant, 10.1% decline in monthly transaction volume on the 21,261 machines it manages.

Cardtronics reports steady transaction volumes on its 25,000-plus machines.

Antonini attributes part of Cardtronics' steady volume increase to the firm's participation in the Bethesda, Md.-based Allpoint surcharge-free network. Allpoint is an issuers network that pays Cardtronics for surcharge-free access to Cardtronic's ATMs.

"I think being part of a surcharge-free network has resulted in a nice steady increase in our volume, almost double from when we joined," says Antonini. "It also helps drive added traffic to retailers."