Branch Transformation
Financial institutions are continuing to embrace ATM outsourcing. Here’s how Star USA FCU benefited from this arrangement.
Photo: Dolphin Debit
July 1, 2025 by Bradley Cooper — Editor, ATM Marketplace & Food Truck Operator
ATMs are a key component of banking strategy. Banks and credit unions alike need to provide access to cash along with other self-service banking tools. ATMs can also be difficult for credit unions to handle.
There are many complex reasons for this ranging from expensive repairs, software updates, cash replenishment and more. As a result, some financial institutions are turning to ATM-as-a-Service arrangements or outsourcing their fleets entirely.
This was the path that Star USA Federal Credit Union chose to handle its small fleet of eight ATMs located in southern West Virginia. To learn more about this effort, ATM Marketplace spoke with Jennifer Rutherford, SVP at Star USA FCU and Joe Woods, SVP of marketing and partnership at Dolphin Debit.
Q: What type of ATMs did you use?
Rutherford: We really don’t want to name names; their equipment and staff were not the issue. The maintenance agreements and upgrades were overwhelming. We didn’t find their ‘top tier’ maintenance plans affordable to our size institution, and the other options were difficult to accurately budget as so much wasn’t covered.
Q: What were the primary difficulties of handling your ATM fleet?
Rutherford:At our size, it was difficult to find a vendor that made owning our own ATMs ‘easy’ and affordable. After we purchased the ATMs, we then had the service agreements, then it seemed like every few years there would be an upgrade to the software needed. Either by the vendor or required by regulation. And even with service agreements, so many of the service calls were ‘outside the scope of the agreement’ that we ended up with additional expense monthly on top of what we budgeted. We wanted the peace of mind of not having to worry about another mandated software or hardware upgrade.
Q: What were the primary reasons you selected Dolphin?
Rutherford: We did our due diligence and ended up vetting three vendors. Dolphin’s reputation, cost structure, and transparency tipped the decision in Dolphin’s favor. We also like the flexibility of setting up our program to either stock the machines ourselves or let Dolphin handle that as well.
Q: How has it improved your operations?
Rutherford: The main benefit is that we don’t have to worry about anything. If there are issues with the machines, we call them, although those issues have been minimal. And the funny thing is the biggest learning curve we’ve had is that the ATMs are not ours. If a machine goes down, in the past we not only had to contact our vendor, but we had the additional worry about the expense involved and if the repair would be covered under our service agreement. Now we have that thought for just an instant, then relief because we know they are Dolphin’s machines, and they’ll take care of everything. Peace of mind. And the downtime on the machines has been minimal. It’s been a big plus for our members to have reliable machines. They relieved the burden on our staff (both front line and managerial, as ATM upgrades are NOT easy to deal with), and provided us long-term cost savings, which were probably our top priorities.
Q: What primary services do you have for FCU?
Woods:We’re offering end-to-end ATM operation, including cash management with armor/CIT at several locations. The credit union also gets access to our more than 4,000 surcharge-free ATMs at no additional cost.
Q: How do you handle maintenance with the ATMs?
Woods:We provide first and second line maintenance services, in addition to remote access fixes and reboots. Our state-of-the-art processor, Euronet’s Ren platform, along with our monitoring and dispatch team, give us second-to-none monitoring and response for our clients’ ATMs.
Q: What’s the most innovative project you have done so far?
Woods: In addition to significant ITM projects, we’re deploying ATMs in Europe for some of our U.S.-based clients. Our ATMs in Europe are capable of dynamic currency conversion while managing exchange rates for each unique currency.
About Bradley Cooper
