Who said that to withdraw from the ATM you necessarily have to have the card with you? Thanks to a function present on the Postamat, the ATMs of the Poste Italiane group, it is possible to withdraw cash by combining the use of the smartphone and the 9 key present on the keypad of these automatic teller machines. The function can be useful for those who prefer to use the telephone instead of the card or in the event that they have forgotten the latter at home. And no, it’s not a secret function that allows you to withdraw money! To use it, in any case, you need to configure it in the official Poste Italiane app and we will soon see how to do it.
How to use the 9 key “trick” on Postamats
To take advantage of the cardless cash withdrawal function from a Postamat, you must first carry out some operations at home, on your smartphone, to make the function in question active. To proceed you must open the Poste Italiane app and select the MyPoste item. Subsequently, touch the name of the card on which you want to activate the function, press on Settings, scroll to the bottom of the screen that opens and touch on Payments, online purchases and withdrawals. Finally, move the switch related to the Paperless Withdrawal function to ON (at the bottom of the screen, in the Withdrawals section).
At this point the function should be fully active and, when you go to a Postamat that supports it, you will have to press the 9 key on the ATM keypad and, via the Poste Italiane application, you will have to scan the QR Code that will appear on the screen of the ATM. After scanning, you can choose from the list the card from which you intend to withdraw, indicate the amount and authorize the operation.
The app’s security system is used to confirm the withdrawal. Authorization can be done by entering your personal PosteID code or, on compatible devices, using the biometric systems integrated on your smartphone, therefore with fingerprint reading or face recognition.
Once the procedure is completed, the Postamat dispenses the cash normally, without the need to insert the card into the reader and without having to type the card’s PIN on the keypad.
Naturally, using the smartphone to authorize cash withdrawals with the 9 key does not allow you to exceed the limits set on your account or card, as the smartphone simply replaces the card as a means of identification and authorization.
The advantages of withdrawing without a card
The absence of the card in the cash withdrawal operation can represent an advantage from a security point of view. During cardless withdrawal you do not have to physically insert the card into the reader and it is not necessary to enter the card PIN. And this means that the procedure reduces interactions with the ATM keypad, thus avoiding running into problems attributable to any skimming devices installed illegally by some cyber criminal.
Launched during the COVID-19 pandemic, this function avoids physically touching the ATM keypad as we have already said, and therefore allows you to complete cash withdrawals in a more hygienic way, although it must be said that by touching the phone (already full of bacteria) and the banknotes (also not the best from this point of view), this advantage is at least partially nullified.
