GRG Banking pioneers gift card-issuing ATMs

The latest version of the automated teller machine can also issue debit cards.

In a statement, the company said that the self-service terminal was designed to support magnetic card and IC card, which are then ready for EMV migration.

A gift card is a specific kind of deposit card used in the retail sector which are designed for the replacement of paper vouchers or gift coupons. Gift cards usually have the same dimensions as debit cards do.

The card can be read via barcode, magnet stripe or RFID chip at the point of sale. Some gift cards can also be recharged with certain amounts of money.

The card-issuing ATM can be deployed in all environments with high volume of cash or merchants, like branches, shopping malls, amusement parks and communities.

GRG Banking, which has yet to announce when it will roll out the new machines into the market, cited the streamlining of the card issuing process and the maximization of maximum ATM utilization efficiency as some of the ATM’s benefits.

According to research from the Mercator Advisory Group, consumers around the world loaded about $460 billion onto gift cards in 2011.

The figure will balloon 50 percent over the next two years, reaching $685 billion by 2014.