By Philippe Preval

U.S. banks have flirted with the idea of cash recycling for several years. Recently, however, the North American market has become more serious about cash machines — largely due to the fact that cash recycling machines have dramatically come down in price. A cash recycling machine that cost $45,000 to $55,000 five years ago costs between $15,000 and $40,000 today.

The big question that remains: Will cash recycling continue to be a subject that garners a lot of lip service and little action, or are U.S. financial institutions finally ready to act?

Cash Recycling in a Nutshell

• Cash handling machines perform simple but important teller tasks:
• Accepting cash
• Dispensing cash
• Storing cash securely
• Tracking the amount and denominations of cash on hand
• Automating the cash cycle

The idea of cash recycling comes from the machines' capability to accept and sort cash deposits and then dispense that same cash for withdrawals. That's why cash recycling machines should be implemented in places where there are high volumes of both deposits and withdrawals, whether that's at the teller counter or a high-traffic ATM.

Serious discussion about implementing cash recycling efforts in the United States began in recent years, with the evolution of hardware improvements. Later, advanced recognition technologies created opportunities for new ATM features, such as intelligent check deposit and cash recycling.
ATM manufacturers began designing cash recyclers in the late 1980s. Over the years, they have tested several solutions, including dedicated “drums” and recycling cassettes.

ATM manufacturers began designing cash recyclers in the late 1980s. Over the years, they have tested several solutions, including dedicated “drums” and recycling cassettes.

Eventually, the technology focused on recycling cassettes. Early initiatives took place in various European countries and accepted and dispensed domestic currencies. Most often, experiments were conducted in small countries where various currencies are distributed.

The European Central Bank (ECB) eventually stepped into the ring and, in 2004, issued basic cash recycling regulations. As is often true in Europe, implementing new procedures took time, so many regulations were implemented progressively: France and Germany implemented regulations in 2005, Spain in 2006, and the United Kingdom in 2010. That's how cash recycling began to flourish in European banks more than 10 years ago.

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Translated version below.

​What is an electronic payment system and what are its characteristics?
Payment banking systems are designed to manage the electronic payment flows (transactions, credit cards, transfers ...) of financial institutions and terminals (ATM, POS, API's ...). They are mission-critical systems: they must operate without failure, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. This defines a particular class of systems where error is forbidden, where everything must be thought of in terms of very high performance, infallibility, high availability such as the possibility of changing components without stopping the service. Moreover, they are in direct contact with the general public and handle considerable amounts of data. In the event of an issue, there would immediately be thousands affected and it would be widely known.

​Finally, given their complexity and the difficulty of their implementation (certifications, migration, connection to equipment of various generations), these systems must last at least 15 years. If you had to replace them after 10 years it would be an economic failure (ROI not found) and technical failure (loss of industry credibility).

As payment hub providers, you must therefore provide a powerful, safe and innovative solution that can evolve over time at a reasonable cost. You must always plan for the medium term.

 What is Lusis’ DNA? What strategy and sectors does your solution cover?
Our DNA is based on involvement, independence, innovation and loyalty. Involvement means respecting time frames and aiming for zero defect. I've never considered failure a possibility no matter what the difficulty may be. Quality derives from a state of mind and value system that requires us to be top notch technically as well as to have the most efficient processes and methods. Innovation means constantly questioning our technology so that we are always faster, better performing, more flexible and more efficient.

What are the main issues you face?
Like all technology companies, we face 4 challenges:
• Successfully complete the projects entrusted to us;
• Maintain our technology at the forefront and to this end reinvest each year a significant part of our income in R & D;
• Win new customers or new markets around the world;
• Recruit new talent and make those we want to stay with us want to stay with us.
​
We have a remarkable team of excellent engineers, physicists and mathematicians with a wide variety of backgrounds from around the world. We are proud of this diversity that is our strength.

What are your technological and more generally intellectual challenges?
As I mentioned before, we do a very demanding IT: high performance, high availability, zero defect. A payment hub must both run like a clock and be able to address areas that are applied mathematics, cryptography, AI, and blockchain. In addition, it must be both open and very secure, stable and able to evolve very quickly. It is a chain of oxymorons. You have to like complicated problems, difficulties, abstraction, and at the same time, be very pragmatic, produce a high level of code quality in C ++ and Python. That's why we need diversity: no one can cover the whole spectrum and that's what makes this job exciting. I don't think we can do this job without passion. Without taking a real pleasure in doing what we do, it always ends up missing an axis of excellence.
 
What are the trends that mark the market today and how do you capture them?
At the moment it moves a lot and, on several axis, it disrupts, it's turbulent, it quivers, it disassembles in all directions. First, there are the GAFA that disrupt the payments ecosystem, the MPAs, the new entrants who destabilize the established players. Then there is the rising API that Europe is trying to channel with PSD2: in short, traditional players are becoming providers of information or service in the form of APIs. At the same time, there are new standards such as ISO 20022, which carry much more data than in the past and open up new services. There are totally new technologies like the blockchain that you have to integrate, use, evolve. To top it off, there are several purely technological changes, such as the Cloud, which calls into question everything we thought we knew about infrastructure or the growing demands on security. All of this happens as a series of relatively independent but concomitant upheavals.

The moment is exciting. With its TANGO micro-service architecture technology completely independent of the infrastructure, its method integrating SCRUM and CBSD, LUSIS is ideally placed to meet these challenges. This is understood by a number of North American institutions who see us as technology partners who can help them get out of the "legacy systems" and face this world full of dangers but opportunities.

 
How does a French SME in a world of big players and well-established competition become a real actor?
With ambition in the noble sense of the term, that is the taste for innovation and the pursuit of excellence, an objective look at the realities of the market, of perseverance, of talent, of passion and a lot of luck, especially having met people who trusted us very early. We have never tried to make alternatives to existing solutions let alone copy them. We always tried to be "forward" as Rimbaud put it. We have remained technically passionate technicians, engineers passionate about engineering. We have always worked in light and efficient teams according to the principles that underpin the SCRUM method. We have strived for excellence in our projects, providing our customers with the most scalable, best performing and lightest solutions possible. That's why our customers are our best sales people.
 
At the same time, we have always invested in R & D. First, because we need our technology, that of an SME is at the top, but also because the challenges that provide R & D are the best cement between teams. We have continually reinvented our business and our TANGO product. Thus, today, and no doubt also thanks to the trust that we have from major contractors, a large US strategic firm sees us not as another software, but one of the companies able to meet the challenge of disruption.