Customer Experience
What's the difference between ATMs and kiosks?
Despite the crossover in functionality, features, and tools, the ATM and self-service kiosk worlds remain separate. This raises a key question: what's the difference between ATMs and kiosks?
December 30, 2025 by Bradley Cooper — Editor, ATM Marketplace & Food Truck Operator
The ATM and kiosk worlds haven't always seen eye to eye, despite the fact that the machines have similar functions and purposes. Despite the crossover in functionality, features, and tools, the ATM and self-service kiosk worlds remain separate. This raises a key question: what's the difference between ATMs and kiosks?
The history of ATMs and kiosks
ATMs have always been a commercial banking product from their inception. Interestingly, a deposit taking machine called the Bankograph predated the ATM by a few years. This 1960 device accepted coins, cash, and checks and was installed in New York City in 1961. It was removed due to a lack of interest.
The first ATM proper was designed by John Shephard-Barron and deployed at a Barclays Bank in the U.K. in 1967. He would claim he came up with the idea by imagining a chocolate bar dispenser. ATMs quickly spread across the world, with the first magstripe card ATM arriving at Chemical Bank in New York in 1969.
ATMs have changed significantly since the 60s, with the advent of PINs, deposit acceptance, bill pay, touchscreens, account management, and video ATMs (known as ITMs). However, their primary feature remains providing cash for customers, whether that be in a bank branch or at a retail store.
Kiosks on the other hand, have had a more experimental history. Their ancestors were primitive vending machines in the 1880s The first truly interactive kiosk was developed not in a business but in a university. A pre-med student created a kiosk in 1977 at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. It used a PLATO computer system with a plasma touchscreen. It was called the Plato Hotline and provided wayfinding information on activities and services around campus such as bus schedules, maps, directories and more.
The first commercial kiosk was designed by the Florsheim Shoe Co. in 1985. It featured a touchscreen, microcomputer, and display monitor to allow customers to look up and order shoes that were not available in the store. The order would then be delivered by a dial-up line for completion. Later on in 1991, Comdex created a kiosk with a built-in Internet connection to help locate missing children.
Today, kiosks serve a variety of purposes, from check-in kiosks at hospitals to informational kiosks in universities to self-order kiosks in restaurants and VR kiosks in retailers.
Similarities
Kiosks and ATMs have many things in common, especially as they grow more advanced through more integration of peripherals, AI, and other tools.
First off, they both are one-to-one devices. They engage one customer at a time with their services. At the same time, they can also both provide marketing messages. Kiosks and ATMs can display loop content on their displays when not in use with promotional materials. Or they can integrate digital signage displays on the top, which can lure in customers.
Second, they can both offer video services. Telehealth kiosks are an increasingly common device in healthcare settings that allow patients to speak with a doctor about minor health issues if they can't or aren't able to visit a clinic or hospital. Banks, especially credit unions, are increasingly deploying ITMs that offer traditional ATM servicesalongside video banking. Customers can call up a banker if they have a question about how to use the machine, need help with banking services, or have a question about a more complex topic.
Third, they often use similar peripheral devices or hardware, ranging from touchscreens to card readers to contactless tap and go and receipt printers. Many companies offer services that work on both ATMs and kiosks, such as Airmon's Sterilization Kiosk, which uses automated sanitation technology to clean the screen and kill off any germs or viruses.
Different purposes
Kiosks and ATMs have different purposes. For instance, kiosks are meant to enhance the customer experience, promote a product or service or sell something. They can also provide information for customers, visitors or patients.
ATMs are primarily a tool of convenience for banking customers, and can provide cash for anyone with a banking card, even if they aren't customers of that bank. Kiosks are primarily meant for use for the company that deploys them.
For example, you couldn't order Hardees from a McDonald's kiosk, but a Chase Bank customer could use their ATM card at a PNC Bank ATM or an independently owned ATM (although they would have to pay fees, unless the bank reimburses the fees.)
The primary difference in purpose between kiosks and ATMs is that kiosks are highly customizable devices that can be used for many verticals, whereas ATMs are first and foremost banking tools.
Security
Kiosk operators spend far less time worrying about security than ATM operators. It is true that some kiosks do accept cash or store sensitive customer data, which can make them targets for criminals. In addition, criminals might steal a kiosk to resell it or harvest it for parts, but ATMs are far more likely to be targeted by criminal groups.
There's a very obvious reason for that: ATMs primarily hold cash and a lot of it. According to Choose ATM.com, bank-owned ATMs can hold up to $200,000, while independent ones hold anywhere from $10,000 to $50,000. ATMs in high traffic areas such as casinos and airports might have more than $500,000 in its cassettes.
There are all manner of tactics criminals use to undermine ATM security. These can include basic physical attacks like removing an ATM from a store, or tying a chain to it with a truck and ripping it out of its enclosure, or inserting a bomb inside of it. Other more sophisticated methods include jackpotting where they install malware onto the ATM, or man-in-the-middle attacks which intercept signals from the device to the payment processor to send out illegitimate requests for cash withdrawals.
Some techniques target the people using or restocking the ATM as well, such as robbing people after they use the ATM or the technician when they come to resupply it with cash.
Conclusion
ATMs and kiosks developed independently of each other and are in many ways very different. However, they are also very similar, as they both meant to improve the customer experience.
In the future, ATMs and kiosks will likely grow closer together, as customers largely want multifunctional devices that can deliver the same experience as on a mobile device. As a result, kiosks and ATM operators will need to develop innovative tools that can deliver these seamless experiences.
In the end, there's a difference between ATMs and kiosks, but it's not as big as many might think.
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