METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR DETERMINING AND ALERTING AVAILABILITY OF PREFERRED AUTOMATED TELLER MACHINES

摘要

An alert process and apparatus employs a geo-coding database to find geographic coordinates corresponding to a street address of a fee-based ATM terminal for which one or more transaction fees or charged to a cardholder to use, employs a terminal locations data store to obtain a street address of an ATM terminal for which no fees or relatively lower fees, would be charged to the cardholder to use, having geographic coordinates closely matching those of the fee-based ATM terminal, and generates alert information including the street address of the non fee-based terminal. Cardholders can be alerted with locations of other ATM's that could have been used for lesser fees or for free, and that are in the vicinity of the ATM that originated the transaction subject to fees. The alert can also present the cardholder with additional benefits or incentives such as discount coupons and/or fee reimbursements.