BACKGROUND

Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) are designed for consumer convenience by allowing consumers to deposit funds, withdraw funds, and perform other account-based services without requiring assistance from a teller.

ATMs have been around for a long time and they were revolutionary in the financial industry when they first appeared some fifty to sixty years ago. ATMs have experienced many enhancements since first appearing in the industry. For example, deposit envelops are no longer needed for deposit transactions since most modern ATMs are equipped with imaging technology; voice guidance is provided for visually impaired consumers; touchscreen displays permit easy selection of interface options; remote video-based customer assistance is available on some ATMs, etc.

ATMs were designed for consumers and consumer-sized deposit and withdrawal transactions. Many small to medium sized businesses are still forced to perform large deposit transactions with a teller during normal business hours because the ATMs are only equipped to handle a bunch of checks and/or currency notes of 300 or less during check/note infeed operations. Businesses are rightly concerned with the safety of their employees carrying large bags of notes to an ATM for deposit while the employee counts out or feeds the ATM pre-sized bunches of notes for deposit transactions. This increases the time the employee is at the ATM with unsecured notes during the transaction. As a result, some businesses perform several deposits at different times during the day, some visit the bank during normal business hours for deposits, and/or some hire a cash transportation service to perform the deposits on behalf of the business.

As a result, many small to medium sized businesses have to safely store large amounts of currency notes on their premises for extended periods of time and/or have to make multiple bank visits throughout a day or a week. Businesses are concerned with cash being on site and may have to hire added security or take other expensive precautions for the protection of their employees.

SUMMARY

In various embodiments, an apparatus, a system, and a method for depositing bulk currency notes are provided.

According to an aspect, a method for performing a bulk currency note deposit by an Automated Teller Machine (ATM) is provided. A media cassette is detected as being interfaced to an apparatus that is externally affixed to the ATM during a deposit transaction being performed by a depositor at the ATM. The deposit transaction is processed by feeding media drawn from the media cassette through a depository/recycling device of the ATM into one or more of an exception bin, an escrow, and second media cassettes associated with a safe of the ATM.

