Microsoft’s much reliable and loved yesteryear operating system Windows XP is finally coming to the end of its cycle but the death of Windows XP will surely affect a lot of things and one such thing being the ATMs all over the globe. Reports suggests that almost 95 % of the ATMs in the world are powered by Windows XP.
Microsoft is finally ending support for Windows XP on April 8th and that would leave 95% of the ATMs in the world open to security risks. In case you don’t know, Windows XP powers most of the ATMs and the software you interact with in ATMs run on top of Windows XP. According to the report, Microsoft has been warning the banks for years about this issue but the banks have failed to show any kind of action to get things upgraded.
According the The Verge, most of the ATMs run on Windows XP full version while some run on the Embedded version which is supported till 2016. Most of the ATMs running Windows XP currently will be upgraded to Windows 7 directly while some would need a hardware upgrade and some would have to be replaced altogether to run Windows 7. According to the report, by April only 15% of these Windows XP will be updated to Windows 7 while the rest will be running out-dated unsupported software. Some companies have opted for custom support from Microsoft until they can plan their move to Windows 7.
All is not bad with the death of Windows XP as you might have seen many ATMs running slow and being clunky and you might have even experienced issues too with the machine getting stuck. With Windows XP phasing out and Windows 7 with upgraded softwares coming on, we will get a much better experience at ATMs.
