How banks want to protect ATMs from being blown up

by time news

Ein a bang, a tremor, and then the plaster comes from the ceiling: When ATMs are blown up, the entire buildings in which the machines are located are increasingly affected – with dangers also for bystanders. The banks want to react to this now, as the R + V insurance of the cooperative banking sector announced on Wednesday.

The difficulties with the many ATMs blown up in Germany would have worsened. “Criminals are increasingly using solid explosives, no longer gas, to crack ATMs,” writes the insurance company. This means that a precautionary measure that the banks have been using to protect themselves against such criminals is largely ineffective: systems for neutralizing gas that had been built into many ATMs were understandably of no use in such cases.

Outdoor ATMs

One consequence: more and more banks have moved their ATMs outside the bank, as the insurance company writes. So that the devices are not blown up again immediately, after all, they are even more accessible there than in the bank lobby, the Volksbanken-Versicherung and the Veloform company, otherwise a manufacturer of mobile mini-hotels, have a kind of “bunker” Developed for ATMs: free-standing pavilions with very strong protection.

The ring-shaped structures are made of reinforced concrete up to 15 centimeters thick and weigh ten tons. Inside is the ATM. Bank customers can access the keyboard and cash dispenser through a kind of window. “The material is similar to a bunker, nothing can be achieved with conventional explosives,” says Anselm Franz, managing director of the manufacturer Veloform.

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