ATM Deposit, Sans Envelope
I needed to deposit cash at a Wells Fargo ATM recently. I am always a bit paranoid about depositing cash at an ATM, so much so that I wanted to stick the cash in a plain envelope, with a deposit slip, into the Wells Fargo envelope. But when I got to the ATM machine, no Wells Fargo envelopes were to be found. I searched the area, high and low – no deposit envelopes.
I keep a few Wells Fargo deposit envelopes in my car just in case, so I went back to the car and stuffed the cash I had into a spare Wells Fargo envelope. But when I get to the actual part where I’m supposed to deposit my money, the ATM machine tells me to deposit my cash – wtihout the envelope!
It’s a new technology they’ve created. You can deposit up to 50 bills in a stack, directly into the ATM, and the machine will count them and post the cash to your account instantly.
Still a bit dubious, I put my smallest bill – a $10 note – into the feeder. There was a little whirring sound and the ATM informed me I had just deposited $10 – would I like to deposit any more cash? I put in a few $20s in a hurried handful. They were not in any particular order and not even stacked neatly. The machine whirred again and voila! It had counted and confirmed each bill I put into the machine.
The amazing thing about this new technology is that it will apparently also read your checks. I am not sure if it actually reads the amount right off the check, because I have yet to put a check in and test it. With the checks, you have to line up your account number in a certain way, so it’s a bit more rigid than the cash deposit. But what an amazing technology this is! Imagine, the paper that will be saved once all ATMs use envelope-less deposits.
Of course, we’d save even more trees without cash and checks, but I’m not willing to forgo the immediacy and anonymity of cash, no matter how environmental it may be.
