Following the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan, large numbers of people were forced to evacuate their homes quickly and without most of their personal items. Among the items left behind were ATM cards, leaving victims unable to access the money in their bank accounts. In response to this problem, a Japanese bank plans to roll out ATMs that require only a palm scan to identify the user – no card required.

ATMs with biometric scanners have been in use for quite a while already, but they require a card in conjunction with a palm or thumb print. If customers lose their card, they also lose access to their cash. The Ogaki Kyoritsu Bank biometric ATMs will ask for a palm print, the customer’s birth date and a four-digit PIN. There are still problems inherent in this proposed new system, and plenty of ways to cheat the palm reader, but the bank will have time to identify those issues. They are introducing the new technology in ten ATMs initially, starting in late 2012.

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In developing nations, getting access to quick cash is not nearly as simple as it is in the first world. Rather than a quick run to the ATM, grabbing some money might involve a visit to a local loan shark. Not only is the concept of banking itself somewhat foreign, but the majority of the population is semi-literate or completely illiterate. This ATM concept from cash register company NRC Corp. would make it simple for illiterate people to access their savings since there is no need to read in order to operate it.

The ATM’s design is meant to make banking easy in areas of the world where banking is not a daily activity. When customers set up new accounts they are fingerprinted, so in order to access their cash they only have to press a thumb onto a fingerprint reader and press a color-coded button corresponding to the amount of money desired. The ATM itself is cylindrical in shape to make it more difficult to break into with a crowbar. If it is ever breached, the entire machine collapses into itself.

But the real obstacle that has to be overcome in third-world banking is finding customers. Will people without access to education really have an interest in banking? NCR is setting up tests for the unusual ATMs in the U.S. currently, and later will conduct tests in target markets like India and China.

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ATMs are kind of like pigeons these days: they’re everywhere you look in urban settings. The high-tech electronic bankers are a relatively recent invention, but we’ve quickly come to count on them. Way before the ubiquitous ATM there was this curious banking machine dating all the way back to 1918. It was called an automatic receiving teller – and if it wasn’t made obvious by the name, this machine only accepted deposits and could not help with withdrawals. This type of machine was used in schools and other organizations in the 1930s to encourage people to save their money by making frequent deposits to their savings accounts.

The machine works simply enough but at the time must have seemed like a marvel of machinery. If the customer wanted to deposit coins, the machine could tell what type of coins were being inserted (in the same way modern vending machines use the weight to tell the difference between coins). But customers depositing paper money had to actually set the slide dial on the machine to the amount they were depositing before telling the machine to stamp their bank books. We have to wonder how many people in the 30s tried to beat the system by tricking the machine into making their bank accounts look artificially flush.

The post Thrifty History: Antique ATM Encouraged Saving, Cheating? first appeared on Gajitz.

Now that plastic money has more or less replaced paper and metal money, our poor little piggy banks are starving to death. Deciding it’s time for our rainy-day funds to catch up with modern technology, Wang Chao, Maggie Kuo and Jordi Parra designed this slightly needy piggy bank.

Rather than just sitting on the shelf and waiting for you to give it a spare nickel or two, this piggy bank lets you know when it is hungry and begs you to “feed” it with your credit card. You insert the card into its mouth and it takes a random amount from your credit or debit card, then drops the money into a separate savings account.

Built over the course of just two and a half days, this prototype is a clever way to remind users to save. It is more like a pet than a bank, demanding attention when it gets hungry or senses that someone is in the room. The adorable anthropomorphized bank goes from sad (when hungry) to happy (when fed) to sleepy (after a meal), rewarding its owner with some tangible feedback for his or her efforts.

The post Modern Piggy Bank Begs for Attention, Chomps Credit Cards first appeared on Gajitz.

It’s not often that we have a problem counting huge stacks of money (because how often are you lucky enough to have stacks of bills?), but the Counting Ring concept from designers Wei Hansen, Li Shaochen, Xu Jinrui, Qi Yibin and Zhao Ying could go a long way toward making it easier anyway.

The ingenious ring fits on the thumb and uses infrared scanning to count each sheet that the wearer thumbs through. Small rubber flaps, or “veins,” ensure that every single bill is counted.

The LED readout on the side of the ring tells how many bills have been passed over the ring’s surface. Presumably this means that every bill in the stack has to be of the same denomination, but this method is still much easier than counting every note by hand.

The ring would undoubtedly be useful in banks and businesses where a large counting machine would be impractical. If it’s ever produced as a consumer product, we’d definitely like to see rappers counting their cash with this rather than just bathing in hundies.

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