Yesour smartphone could soon help you put money in your hands – and keep it out of the hands of thieves.

More and more banks are looking for ways to allow customers to use their smartphones to withdraw money from ATMs, instead of inserting their debit cards. Industry-wide, 69% of financial institutions say they plan to implement some type of mobile-ATM integration in the next few years, according to a June report. report by ATMmarketplace.com sponsored by KAL ATM Software.

With the increase in ATM fraud, developers claim that using smartphones in place of debit cards at ATMs provides greater security and convenience.

The idea is an interesting twist in digital payments, which typically involves transferring money electronically between accounts to pay for goods or services. In this case, some of the latest technology is used to produce a financial instrument that has been around for thousands of years: cash.

“We are very optimistic about the direction taken,” said Douglas Brown, senior vice president and general manager of FIS Mobile, a division of FIS, one of the world’s largest providers of technology to financial institutions. The service is offered at three regional banks: BMO Harris Bank, based in Chicago; Wintrust Financial Corp., based in Rosemont, Illinois; and a third bank that has not been publicly announced.

In the coming months, the company plans to announce partnerships with banks in Massachusetts, New York and Pennsylvania. Within three to five years, he says, this could become “the predominant method of accessing cash.” By early 2016, FIS expects the service to be available at over 100,000 ATMs for customers of participating banks.

Doug Peacock, vice president of mobile banking for BMO Harris, says his bank is happy with customer reactions to what he calls “mobile money”. He says the bank does not release usage statistics, but expects usage to increase.

Popular with customersNear field communicationQR codes

Then, while logged into the bank’s mobile app, the customer holds up the smartphone, which reads the QR code and sends the transaction details to the bank. The bank gives its approval to the ATM, which distributes the money, debits the account and sends a receipt to the smartphone, all in a few seconds.

The operation is symbolized , which means switching data between phone and ATM can only be used once, making it unnecessary for cyber thieves. Brown says he’s not aware of any cases of fraud involving cardless ATMs.

He says the process has become popular with different age groups. A 75 year old man, he says, wrote to Wintrust and said, “Dear Wintrust, I really like using money without a card.

Using phones for cash also proved popular with people in their late teens and twenties, although banks guessed that these users would be adept at using mobile wallets and paying. transactions electronically, and would prefer to use these methods rather than paper money.

“They like the money to be anonymous from mom and dad sometimes,” says Brown.

Mobile banking, fraud on the rise

Interest in using smartphones at ATMs is coming as more and more Americans get used to using their phones for payments. The release of Apple Pay in 2014 helped give mobile payments a “cool factor” and generated some interest after years of slow adoption of other so-called “mobile wallets”.

The number of Americans using mobile banking services has almost quadrupled in the past five years, to around 70 million, according to Aite Group. By the end of 2018, that number is expected to reach 133 million, an increase of 90%.

At the same time, credit and debit card fraud has increased. Using a variety of high-tech and low-tech means, criminals were able to obtain credit card numbers. They then strike new cards by placing the stolen information in the magnetic strips on the back of the cards. These tapes contain enough information for a valid credit or debit transaction.

In the first three months of 2015, the number of successful attempts to use fraudulent cards at ATMs more than doubled from the same period a year earlier, according to FICO, a credit rating company. Attacks on non-bank ATMs have more than tripled.

On the credit side, banks and retailers are moving to cards that rely on EMV computer chips, which are more secure when paired with a retail terminal that can interact with the chip. But the process is moving slowly: Despite an October 2015 deadline to upgrade their devices, only 42 percent of small businesses plan to comply, according to a April survey by Intuit .

At debit, the transition is even slower, because the deadlines are further away. MasterCard debit cards are expected to be converted to chip cards by October 2016, and Visa debit cards by October 2017.

Switching to EMV will help curb some of the fraud, and banks are taking action to identify potential areas of vulnerability, said Doug Johnson, senior vice president of payments and cybersecurity policy for the American Bankers Association. .

For example, he says some have deployed technologies that thwart the skimming devices that criminals place on ATMs to collect card data. In some places, banks have stepped up inspections of their ATMs to identify these devices.

He says consumers will decide whether ideas like cardless ATMs go mainstream, but says there’s a lot to like about cards: “The card is convenient. Your card is full of batteries.

Either way, fraud will never be eliminated, he says. “There’s never really a layer of security that’s going to completely win out,” Johnson said. “You see the fraud moving. It’s like a balloon. You squeeze it in one domain and it expands into another domain. “

See linked:Video: card skimming2015 cash advance survey: cash will cost you dearlyHow to sign up for banking alerts on your cell phone (and why you should)

The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.

The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.