Nautilus Hyosung is currently known more for making the smaller, merchant-owned ATMs that can be found inside convenience stores, shops and restaurants. But the company wants to become a bigger player in the bank-based ATM market, a market now dominated by NCR.
There’s a certain irony in Nautilus Hyosung’s move in that NCR left Dayton for Georgia, and now a Korean firm has moved into the area and hired former NCR employees to help it compete against NCR.
To be clear, NCR still has a data center and sales and service employees in Dayton, company spokesman Jeff Dudash said.
Among the 25 or so Nautilus Hyosung engineers, software developers, product management and sales staff that work in Miami Twp., about 15 of them list NCR on their resumes, said Rob Evans, director of project management for Nautilus Hyosung. Evans is one of the former NCR employees.
“Banks are reinventing how they serve customers and we are doing that right here,” Evans said.
NCR started in Dayton in 1884. John Patterson bought the company and renamed it National Cash Register Co. The company was the first to mass produce the cash register.
Now NCR also makes ATMs, self-service checkout machines, airport check-in kiosks, and other point-of-sale technology systems. NCR says it is the biggest producer of ATMs in the U.S.
NCR moved its headquarters to Duluth, Ga., in 2009. The former NCR headquarters building at 1700 S. Patterson Blvd. was subsequently sold to the University of Dayton.
Hyosung Corp. is a multinational conglomerate, with other lines of business in chemicals, power and industrial systems, industrial materials, construction and financing. Nautilus Hyosung America is one division in the financial services business headquartered in Irving, Texas.
One of Nautilus Hyosung’s biggest customers is Citbank, Evans said. In late 2010 the South Korean company said it began partnering with JPMorgan Chase & Co. Local Hyosung staff worked with Chase to help the nation’s largest bank create new self-service kiosks, a next-generation ATM that can do everything ATMs can do now, plus more functions typically performed by tellers.
“Every bank in the United States, if they’re not thinking about redoing their distribution model right now, they’re already behind,” Evans said.
Chase introduced these self-service kiosks to southwest Ohio at a newly-built Blue Ash branch that opened in April. Customers can use the kiosks to cash checks, withdraw money in multiple denominations including $1, $5, $20 and $50 bills, pay credit card bills and buy money orders.
Currently more than 400 self-service kiosks are installed nationwide, and Chase plans to double that by the end of 2013, said Chase spokeswoman Emily Smith. The kiosks look like giant iPads mounted on a cabinet.
Hyosung manufactured the custom cabinet for the new Chase machines, and helped develop the software working with Chase’s technology team in Columbus, Evans said. Chase’s largest single-site operations outside of New York are in Ohio.
The new device “allows us to have much more flexibility in our distribution itself. If you think of a branch, our traditional branch might be 5,000-square-feet,” said Bill Sheley, Chase Bank’s head of branch and ATM innovation. “Now branches can be as small as a few 100 square feet with a banker and one of these kiosks, or it could be much bigger if it’s a sales office and we’re doing other things.”
“We’re trying to get rid of the banker having to spend time counting a lot of cash, processing a bunch of paper. We want them focused on customers,” Sheley said.
NCR also is working with Chase on its larger bank-branch transformation projects, Dudash said.
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