ATM Reforms produce guaranteed 20% investment return?
If it looks too good to be true it probably is. And a guaranteed 20% return definitely looks too good to be true.
But thats exactly what promoters of an Automated Telling Machines (ATMs) investment scheme, including former Federal Liberal MPs, Grant Chapman and Ross Cameron, are offering.
Even more remarkable is that the promoters are citing the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA), and its recent direct-charging reforms, as laying the foundation for the scheme.
Details of the investment are outlined at www.myatm.com.au.
My ATM has reserved up to 3,000 ATMs with leading suppliers of ATMs. We can get you into your own ATM business and assist with finance# for your new plant and equipment.
My ATM will place orders for ATMs with leading suppliers for machines on your behalf. (Minimum orders of five ATMs.)
These ATMs will be sited at prime locations that support an average of at
least 1,000 transactions per month. Under binding legal agreements, the deployer will collect the transaction fees, pay expenses associated with operating the ATMs (including phone calls,
service, switching, maintenance etc) and pay you a guaranteed minimum fee per transaction that would allow a 20% return on capital. If the transaction levels are higher, the fee increases.
According to My ATM, the recent RBA direct-charging reforms have rendered obsolescent as many as 2,500 of the current installed stock of more than 25,000 of ATMs.
These are mostly machines owned by independent operators and unable to be upgraded to comply with the new rules requiring ATM fees to be displayed on-screen at the time of the transaction.
Or, as myatm describes it:
The RBA's introduction of direct charging rendered a significant number of Australia's existing ATM fleet obsolete because of their inability to comply with the new fee disclosure obligations.
In many cases deployers are electing to replace the older non-compliant machines with new ATMs rather than incurring the costs of an expensive software retro-fit.
Certainly it is true that many, indeed a majority of ATMs in Australia are owned by independent operators (i.e. (non-banks) such as Customers Ltd, iCash and FirstData (CashCard).
But it is arguable whether the RBA’s new rules are forcing these company’s to replace significant numbers of their machines, and equally doubtful that market developments since the reforms were
introduced on March 3rd this year have helped the viability of the myATM proposal.
Although the reforms left open the option for banks to charge, on top of their usage fee, a so-called ‘foreign’ fee to customers making transactions through other banks ATMs’, and some initially
did so, few if any are now doing that. Instead they are mostly charging a flat $2 fee. (For a table of fees being charged go to www.atmfeetracker.com)
This means that any independent, or non-bank operators charging a higher fee than the banks, may well find that many ATM users decide to use other alternatives once they see how much they’re going to be hit.
But whether or not that analysis is accurate, the most intriguing aspect of this scheme is that it appears to have fallen in between the cracks of Australia’s regulatory framework for financial investment schemes.
An Australian Prudential and Regulatory Authority (APRA) spokesman said that they had no jurisdiction over such a scheme.
An ACCC spokeswoman, similarly, said that it seems likely that the scheme falls within the jurisdiction of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC).
“On information provided ... it seems very much that the promotion involves investment opportunities which would ordinarily fall within ASIC's jurisdiction.”
Scheme promoters are, however, claiming the investment doesn’t fall under ASIC’s purview.
For more information go to
www.myatm.com.au
www.ownmyatm.com
www.atmfeetracker.com
www.asic.gov.au
www.apra.gov.au
www.accc.gov.au
Share this article?
Use these links to share this story with friends via social bookmarking sites.
| 
