By Larry Haverkamp

About 10 years ago, when our youngest daughter was 3 years old, Mrs Money and I were talking about how to get enough cash to pay for our new home.

Our little girl overheard us and said: "Don't worry, Mommy! Take it from the ATM."

Good idea. Those machines have a lot of money.We take them for granted but there is a fascinating story behind "automatic teller machines".

Banks in Singapore have about 2,500 ATMs. DBS - including POSB - has the most with 950 island-wide. You can also topup ez-link cards through their ATMs.

Next are UOB and OCBC with just over 500 ATMs each. The two banks share their network, and the customers of one bank can withdraw money from the ATMs of the other, which gives customers access to more than 1,000 ATMs.

A slight drawback is that cash withdrawals are free from a customer's own bank but after two withdrawals per month from the partner bank, there is a 30 cent charge.

That isn't true for another network - called ATM-5 - which gives cash withdrawals with no charge for all ATMs in the network.

It includes ATMs shared among six foreign banks: Citibank, Maybank, HSBC, Standard Chartered, Royal Bank of Scotland and the State Bank of India.

For these banks, the customers have access to the 150 shared ATMs in the network plus "proprietary" ATMs.

Citibank, for example, has 140 proprietary ATMs which can be used only by its customers. They also have access to 150 ATMs in the ATM-5 network. In total, it gives access to 290 ATMs, which is the most among foreign banks.

Five tidbits

• Tidbit #1: It seems strange that the ATM-5 network isn't called ATM-6, since it has six member banks. It's because ATM-5 originally included 5 foreign banks but didn't bother to change its name when it added a sixth:The State Bank of India.
  
  
• Tidbit #2: ATMs are a great time-saver. Another is cheque deposit boxes, which let you quickly deposit a cheque without waiting in a queue. Banks usually have one at each branch. As a rule of thumb, banks have 1 deposit box for every 10 ATMs.
  
  
• Tidbit #3: The first ATM was installed in 1939 in NewYork City but was removed after six months due to lack of customer acceptance.
  
  
• Tidbit #4: The next ATM was installed in England in 1967 by Barclays Bank and was an instant hit. There are now 1.5 million ATMs worldwide.
  
  
• Tidbit #5: The world's most remote ATM is at McMurdo Station. It is the only ATM in the continent of Antarctica and is provided by Wells Fargo Bank from California. The local population of 200 uses and maintains it. A technician from the US comes once every two years to service it.

This article first appeared in The New Paper.