Why Do ATMs Still Feel Like They Were Designed in 1998?

A closer look at the machine we all use but rarely think about

You pull out your phone. One look and Face ID opens your banking app. Your balance is right there. You can transfer money or freeze a card in less than a minute.

Then you stand in front of an ATM 😅

Suddenly everything has a different rhythm. Insert your card. Choose a language. Enter your PIN. Wait for Processing to blink on the screen. Somewhere inside the box you hear one thing move, then another, as if the machine is considering a major life decision instead of giving you five banknotes.

And the funny thing is we rarely question it. We just accept that ATMs are… like this. They have their own way of doing things.

I used to blame the screen.. The fonts, the oversized buttons, the messages that look like nobody has touched them in years. It makes sense! The screen is the part that looks most like our phones, so it is the part we know how to judge.

But maybe the screen deserves less of the blame than we give it.

Behind it is a machine holding real cash.. counting it, then pushing it through a little slot in the wall. Your banking app shows you money. An ATM physically hand it to you.

Different game.

That was the point where the whole thing started making more sense to me. We treat an ATM like a bad app trapped inside a box, when it is closer to a piece of infrastructure that happens to have a screen.

And that is almost the answer to the title.

Except.. here is the funny part: some of these machines are not old at all.

Seven Bank in Japan has a service called FACE CASH, which lets people perform transactions using facial recognition.

Yep, your face 😶

So no, ATM technology did not simply freeze in the 90s. A machine can recognize your face and still leave you standing in front of an interface that somehow feels twenty years older. If anything, that makes the whole thing stranger.

Think about what it would take to update your banking app if someone had to visit every phone, remove the old one and physically install a new device in its place.

We probably would not be getting weekly updates.

That is much closer to the ATM world. There is no Update All button for boxes bolted into walls 😅

For example, Bank of Ireland started a project in 2025 to replace around 650 ATMs across its branches. The number is not really the interesting part. The interesting part is that an “update” here can mean replacing actual machines, one by one, over years rather than overnight. And yes… they’re still replacing them 😬

But the thing that changed how I looked at ATMs the most was sitting in front of me the whole time.

If someone asked me to redesign an ATM today, the physical keypad would probably be one of the first things I would throw away. Make the whole thing glass. Add some smooth motion. Done. It looks newer already.

Now.. Put your finger on the number 5.

Feel that tiny bump?👀

You may have never really noticed it. For someone who cannot see the screen, that little mark helps tell them where their finger is. Enter, Clear and Cancel can be distinguished by touch too.

Those details are there for a reason. In the US, accessibility guidelines require things like a tactile mark on the 5 key, raised symbols on important buttons, and audio instructions so people with visual disabilities can use the ATM on their own.

To that person, the keypad is not some leftover from an old interface. It may be the thing that lets them use the machine without asking anyone for help.

See? This is what I mean 😄

A minute ago, the keypad was the first thing we wanted to remove. Now deleting it feels a little harder. A sheet of glass might look newer, sure, but that alone does not make it better.

Of course, this does not mean every bad ATM decision is secretly hiding a brilliant reason. Sometimes a bad button is just a bad button and a confusing message could simply have been written better. Some things look old because they still serve a purpose. Some things look old because nobody fixed them.

Next time you use an ATM, you might put your finger on the 5 while Processing sits on the screen. You will hear the same movement inside the machine, then the cash will come out.

It may still feel old.

But “old” probably will not explain it quite as easily as it used to.

Maybe while reading this, you were thinking:

“Wait… why would I even use an ATM these days? I have Apple Pay.”
or whatever you use 😁

Fair. Me too.

But this question kept coming back to me every time I had to use an ATM or even just walked past one.

Why does this thing still feel like this?

And that’s really why I write this series.

I like exploring the little mysteries hiding inside things we use, see, or walk past every day without giving them a second thought.

If you’re that kind of curious too, you can Follow me to get the next one!

Consider it a small mystery to go with your next coffee ☕

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Why Do ATMs Still Feel Like They Were Designed in 1998? was originally published in Bootcamp on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.