Guillaume’s blog

Using ATM to send cash – no bank account or card required, only a cell phone.

November 5th, 2008

If you haven’t read this at bankwatch or banktech yet:

Privier’s New ATM Service Requires No Card, Account

The service is a cash-to-cash service targeted at the unbanked population. After registering a mobile phone online as well as other personal information, a user can go to an ATM, deposit cash, enter a mobile phone number, and receive in return a 10-digit withdrawal code that he can send to someone else.

This is essentially an authorization delegation mechanism, and as such it reminds me of OAuth, which allows authorization delegation for APIs on the Web.

The main issue here is adoption: the service is only valuable if the receiving party can go to an ATM that supports the technique, so my understanding is that this will have a real value when it is deployed by a large ATM network operator, or when it is supported accross networks via a common protocol.