How do banks determine the locations for installing ATMs?

Banks predominantly start with locating ATM in their branches. That establishes the primary ATM (Core) network. Off-site ATMs are installed at places where foot-traffic is high.

Typically, a Retail Bank's marketing department would research areas of intrest where the bank should have its off-site ATM installed. Such research is grouped by various parameters:

• Estimated traffic per day
• Location popularity
• Weekend or Weekday traffic (or both?)
• Rough estimation of transaction size in such a location
• Service Routes (for Security company, is the ATM within a route or away from it)
• Other ATMs in the vicinity
• Nearest Bank ATM
• Leasing space issues / costs
• Marketing potential
• Communication & Power infrastructure
• Threat scale for vandalism and/or crime
• Ease of servicing an ATM
• Brand Management (Exposure)
• Bank Owned ATM or Leased Through 3rd Party
• Competition Factor (if there are multiple ATMs in the same location)
• Vestibule Preference

All these parameters are taken into account and prioritized and then the banks then take the next step in trying to find out the operating costs of such an ATM (which would include physical land lease space, etc.).

Once such numbers are in hand, the bank then makes a decision as where to install the ATMs (based on their research), where they would get the most bang for their buck.