NAC2018 featured a focused educational program with a large faculty of ATM and Payments industry experts, covering the areas of most interest to U.S. ATM deployers. Attendees responded by filling meeting rooms to capacity, leaving hotel employees scrambling to provide more seats to accommodate standing room only audiences. Attendees, according to initial feedback, were also impressed by the number of new products exhibited on the show floor and highlighted in "flash presentation" sessions.
"It was a really vibrant and upbeat atmosphere at last week's conference, reflecting the close-knit U.S. Independent/Retail ATM community and excellent networking that mark our annual event", said NAC Chair and Access One CEO, George Sarantopoulos. "When you bring hundreds of ATM operators, suppliers and industry experts together from across the country, the learning, networking and positive business experience that takes place is phenomenal."
Exciting new opportunities were presented at NAC2018 in the emerging Bitcoin/Crypto ATM and terminal based gaming/sports betting channels, with special relevance for America's ATM ISOs/IADs. Highlighting the NAC2018 faculty were Federal Reserve of Atlanta payments experts, Dave Lott and Doug King, providing insights on the state of cash in America and the regulatory viewpoint on emerging Crypto ATM products and services. Keynote remarks by US Secret Service Special Agent John Lapati, highlighted the conference's ATM Security Academy III program. Professor Christopher Baynard, PhD presented the findings from his PhD team's first of its kind locational study of ATMs in America, including results on how independent/retail ATMs account for almost 60% of the terminals today in our nation, with a statistically valid number serving lower socio-economic communities across the U.S.
Also highlighting this year's show was recent breaking news that global network giant VISA plans to authorize provision of Dynamic Currency Conversion (DCC) for its cardholders at ATMs in the U.S. and worldwide, effective April 13, 2019. It was noted by VISA spokespersons at the show that this policy change was reached in no small part, based upon the public petition and supporting data/documentation initiated by NAC almost exactly one year ago during the NAC2017 Conference & Expo.
While news of the decision broke just days prior to the Las Vegas event, NAC officials were able to coordinate to have VISA subject matter experts Goran Ribar and Hitesh Patel present at NAC2018 to deliver the implementation/certification details. Based upon current DCC numbers associated with MasterCard DCC ATM transactions (already in place at U.S. ATMs), positive impacts for U.S. ATM deployers from the added VISA transaction volumes are expected to be significant.
Another featured piece of breaking news during NAC2018 was the announcement that top U.S. Congressional leadership had sent correspondence to the top three federal banking regulators, seeking immediate action to stop the ongoing rash of bank account closures and nationwide blacklisting of independent/retail ATM deployer bank accounts. Notably, even with the advent of upcoming mid-term elections, this pointed and forceful correspondence was an all too rare bi-partisan communication, that was directly in line with recent virtually unanimous bi-partisan House of Representative votes to end the ill-advised Operation Choke Point initiative.
"NAC and the millions of Americans our members are privileged to serve cannot adequately express our thanks and appreciation to House Financial Institutions Subcommittee Chairman Blaine Luetkemeyer and senior House Financial Services Committee member Carolyn Maloney for their efforts in seeking immediate action from bank regulators to help end the current ATM bank account blacklisting crisis," said NAC Executive Director, Bruce Renard. "We are hopeful this step will spur necessary action by bank regulators and the nation's largest banks to promptly resolve this crisis."
NAC also announced that next year's annual tradeshow, NAC2019 Conference & Expo, will be taking place on Oct. 15-17th 2019, at Planet Hollywood - Las Vegas.
For additional information, please visit the NAC website at: https://www.natmc.org.