Discover the Tranax Difference

Overview
Tranax leads the self-service industry in the design, development, manufacture, and sale of self-service technology to the retail, banking, hospitality, entertainment, and gaming industries. Founded in 1986 by Dr. Hansup Kwon, the company now has sold over 90,000 ATMs installed across North America.

From the beginning, Tranax has been known for its innovative, high-value products, but what really differentiates the company from larger competitors is its strong focus on product quality and reliability, customer service and support, and the entrepreneurial and visionary founder.

The company was selected by Frost and Sullivan to receive its Growth Strategy Leadership Award for 2006 “for its outstanding ability to make rapid strides into the highly competitive ATM market in North America.”

Recognized for Quality Products -- Designed for the End User
For the past ten years, Tranax has built its reputation on the excellence and reliability of its products. From the best-in-class Mini-Bank Series of ATMs to self-service kiosks, Tranax is recognized for innovating a range of low-cost, consumer-friendly ATMs that are easy to use at home and in retail locations where customers already shop. While customers may never enter a bank, they will experience a bank’s brand through its retail ATMs.

From the beginning Tranax designed the Mini-Bank family of machines for improved ergonomics, bright attractive colors, and intuitive user interface. Tranax pioneered large color screens at a time when most retail terminals employed green or amber text. The company was among the first to offer an outdoor readable display and a less complex modular design. Tranax was also an early adopter of Microsoft’s Windows, an operating system that provides customers with a familiar, easy-to-use experience. Windows also transforms an ATM from a simple cash dispenser to a platform for the delivery of financial or retail services that can be easily modified or upgraded.

Industry Standard for Reliability
This emphasis on improving the entire product solution extends all the way to the back-end systems that are used to manage a network of ATMs. In an industry where mean downtime between failures can dramatically impact revenues and customer satisfaction, Tranax solutions are renowned for their reliability. When downtime does occur, the company’s rapid response team quickly evaluates the problem over the phone, suggests a fix, or drop ships a replacement part for delivery the next day. Because the ATMs are constructed in a modular fashion, it’s a simple matter to swap out a malfunctioning part. Tranax tracks not just the serial number of an ATM, but all of its individual parts in order to determine a part’s history and inventory. The result is a much lower total cost of ownership over the product life cycle.

An Unparalleled Level of Customer Support
Tranax has invested heavily in back-end operations to provide unparalleled support for its distributors and their customers to work faster, smarter, more securely – at less cost. This high-level of customer service enables its distributors to reduce expenses, build customer loyalty, and generate new revenue for the ISO and retail outlet.

Tranax was the first in its industry to utilize the Internet to streamline internal operations, inventory control, order entry, product shipping, and tracking. Its state-of-the-art web-based order management and product-tracking system enables authorized distributors to place an order for a customer directly into the Tranax system. There, the product is fully tested, pre-configured, compliant out of the box and shipped directly to the distributor’s customer site within 72 hours. This eliminates the dealer’s need to keep costly inventory and make a heavy capital investment. Instead, Tranax acts as the central distribution and logistics center, relieving resellers from much of the financial and operational burden.

Consider the alternative: A distributor faxes an order to a vendor where it is manually re-entered into the vendor’s order entry system. It takes a day or two for the order to be entered and then a week or more for the order to be filled. Machines are then shipped to the distributor who in turn resends the unit to the customer’s site. At the site, the distributor configures each ATM. Thus, the distributor might wait two weeks to receive a machine, pay double for shipping, and work twice as hard to set the ATM up.

Market Entry Strategy: Retail ATMs
From the start, Tranax has been as innovative in its approach to partnering as it has been in its technology development. Wherever possible, Tranax has teamed with companies that help it to enter new markets, build a strong channel of distribution, and drive market share and industry leadership.

When Nautilius Hyosung, a manufacturer of bank automation systems in Korea, approached Tranax in 1997, the retail ATM market was already well underway. Nautilius Hyosung was late.

Tranax, under the leadership of Dr. Hansup Kwon, would leverage its partner’s experience and success in ATM manufacturing and build a channel of distribution through the Independent Service Organizations or ISOs from the ground up. These new small distributors eagerly took advantage of the “ATM Gold Rush,” created when the government allowed surcharges on ATM transactions.

In the spring of 1998, Tranax entered the retail ATM market with a product and a program of systems and services that enabled the Tranax ISOs to compete with products from better-established vendors. The company’s industry-defining Mini-Bank Series enabled convenience stores, gas stations, and fast food stores to enter the competitive ATM market with a better product at a lower cost. Dr. Kwon put in place strong fiscal and credit controls that protected and ensured Tranax and its distributors’ profitability.

As the market for ATMs began to mature in late 1999, Dr. Kwon sought out new ways to extend product functionality and to expand into new markets. As early as 2000, the company began to look at innovative approaches to drive growth by delivering new features designed to increase the number of machine transactions. These upgrades to its basic retail product line included additional services such as pre-paid phone cards, money transfers, gift cards, and advertising.

In response to an increasingly competitive market, Dr. Kwon and his team also looked at expanding Tranax’s product line to include new self-service capabilities and stand alone self-service machines, selling them to larger retail chain stores, such as gas retailers or regional and national food stores, hotel chains, and movie and entertainment companies.

Growth Strategy: Essential Banking ATMs for Financial Institutions
In early 2003 the entrepreneurial company set its sights on the financial institution ATM market, a segment of the industry that was in flux. New regulations for security and access for the disabled meant that many financial institution ATMs would have to be upgraded. Taking advantage of the mandated upgrade, Tranax came into the financial market in 2004 with a high quality, low-cost ATM that provided “essential banking services” for smaller financial institutions, such as community banks or credit unions. These smaller banks needed to comply with the new regulations but didn’t require — or want to pay for — expensive upgrades to their existing equipment or the advanced functionality that was packaged into the machines by the larger ATM suppliers. With its turnkey solutions, Tranax equipped the smaller banks with ATMs that met their customers’ needs for more convenient banking at a fraction of the usual total cost of ownership.

New Opportunities and Markets: Self-service
In 2005 Tranax introduced the Mini-Bank 4000 Platform of products, its first entirely self-designed and manufactured ATM and self-service machine for the retail segment. Developing its own hardware and software gave Tranax greater control over the design of each machine. It also enabled the company to respond quickly to market changes with advanced functionality or product enhancements. By providing its own manufacturing, Tranax also provided its distributors and their customers with service and support that was closer to home.

With the Mini-Bank 4000, Tranax transformed the ATM from a cash dispenser to a “bank-in-a-box,” providing a full range of banking services to the “unbanked,” that segment of the population who don’t typically use a financial institution. These new services include: bill payment, check cashing, money transfer, pre-paid calls, cell phone top off, and the depositing of checks. They also provide other functions that go beyond the normal definition of banking to include ticketing for major entertainment and sporting events and the ability to dispense cards for pre-paid gifts. It is believed that this underserved population spends an estimated $10 billion annually on transactions such as check cashing, money orders, money transfers, and pre-paid phone cards, according to the Chicago-based Center for Financial Services Innovation in May 2005.

Also in 2005, Tranax released its new Check Cashing Self-Service Terminal, its first in a series of stand alone self-service terminals (SSTs). This machine offers banks and retail stores the ability to dispense cash while providing customers with the ability to cash checks — all from a single point of contact. This new technology has been designed to help retail stores and smaller banks to invigorate their business, cut costs and increase fee income, and enhance their customers’ experience.

In keeping with Dr. Kwon’s vision, the new SSTs enable customers to cash checks with immediate verification and approval, access account information, print statements, receive cash, research loans, or enroll for an account debit card. The state-of-the-art systems also help retail stores and banks build customer loyalty and brand awareness, increase transactions, and reduce costs through a robust, highly secure self-service terminal. These new machines are of particular use to smaller community banks and credit unions which lack the resources to staff branch locations. All banks, however, can benefit by reducing the number of tellers required.

Tranax: A Valued Partner
Beyond selling ATMs, Tranax provides a network of support and service through authorized service providers. This program allows the manufacturer to respond to the specific requirements of financial institutions and banking equipment resellers. The company also has relationships with all major national and regional ATM transaction processors.

Tranax consistently focused on a market-winning combination of innovative products and strong partnerships that made it the leading provider of ATM machines to the retail industry. The company has a history of choosing the right partners and adding value to those relationships so that all partners succeed in entering new markets.

Tranax continues to rely on strong partnerships in order to bring new self-service solutions to market and to gain entry to their partners’ customers in that new segment. The company recently partnered with Livewire International (ticketing), Vero (check cashing), TIO Networks (bill payments), and has been testing these solutions for full-scale release since fourth quarter of 2006.

In addition, the company is working with a partner on check imaging for bank deposits for remote deposit capture, a new capability with particular interest to the small- to medium-sized business that can be used at retail locations as well as financial institutions.

Finally, the company is working with a host of smaller, specialized suppliers to develop customized hardware solutions for their specific needs. These include kiosk providers to movie houses, ski resorts, hotels, airlines, car washes, for travel or government information, self-check out, and a myriad of other applications.

This strategy has served the company well. As its 150 ISOs have grown, so has Tranax, to become a leading supplier to the retail ATM industry. Despite its competitors' 6-year lead, Tranax has sold over 90,000 machines out of an industry total of 400,000 ATMs in North America in 2005. In June of 2006, Tranax received the Frost and Sullivan award for leading growth strategy in its market. Tranax, a privately-held company, has also been profitable in every quarter since its entry into the ATM market in 1997.

Management Team
Tranax’s management team is lead by its founder and CEO, Dr. Hansup Kwon who founded Tranax as Cross International Technologies in 1986. Dr. Kwon is considered a visionary and entrepreneur in the retail ATM and self-service industries and is highly regarded for his company’s business practices and phenomenal growth. He is an industry veteran with over 20 years of technology and computer systems experience. Dr. Kwon received his PhD and MSEE from the University of Michigan in electrical and computer engineering.

The Tranax Difference
From its innovative, high-value products to its strong focus on product quality and reliability, customer service and support, Tranax is at the forefront of the dynamic self-service industry with the design, development, manufacture, and sale of retail ATMs and self-service kiosks.