Cash Center Automation: Hand Counts to ABB Robots

Cash center automation means taking people out of the rooms where banknotes are counted, checked, bundled and stored. Banks, central banks and cash-in-transit companies all run these centres. Over a century the work moved from clerks counting by hand to sorting machines that read thousands of notes a minute, and lately to robot arms and automated vaults that move the bundles around those machines. This post follows that path, looks at what the cash industry has been doing this autumn, and sets out where ABB robots could fit and which problems still slow the work down.

Staff process banknotes on a G+D BPS 200 sorter in India in 2004. Photo: SchmiAlf / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

From counting tables to the first banknote sorters

For most of the twentieth century money was counted by hand, note by note. In 1937 a Harris and Ewing photographer caught Treasury staff in Washington counting worn currency before it was destroyed, and bank tellers sorted notes by denomination into straps of 100. Mechanical help came early but stayed simple. In 1916 the United States granted a patent for a "Machine for Assorting and Counting Paper Money", which a cashier fed by hand through several slots. The Federal Reserve used it for decades as the Federal Bill Counter. In 1957 the British firm De La Rue began selling the first counting machine that counted a stack on its edges.

Treasury staff in Washington count worn currency before it is destroyed, 1937. Photo: Harris & Ewing, Library of Congress via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Counting was only half the job. Someone still had to decide whether each note was genuine and clean enough to go back into circulation. Once microelectronics arrived at the end of the 1960s, engineers began building machines that did both checks in one pass. Toshiba in Japan, Crosfield in Britain, SFA in Italy and GAO, a Giesecke+Devrient (G+D) company in Germany, built the first prototypes, and the American firm Recognition Equipment joined in 1976. Central banks drove the demand, above all the Bank of Japan, the Banca d'Italia, De Nederlandsche Bank and the Deutsche Bundesbank.

A G+D ISS 300PS banknote sorter, the first generation model shown with transparent covers. Photo: SchmiAlf / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

The Bundesbank put G+D's ISS 300 into service in 1977. It was semi-automatic, sorted about 8 notes a second and stayed in production until 2000, with more than 2,100 machines sold to 67 countries. From 1985 a second generation reached up to 40 notes a second and handled debanding, banding, bundling and shredding of unfit notes on its own. G+D's BPS 3000 won a large Federal Reserve order in 1990. Inside the machine the work was now automatic, yet people still carried the bundles, boxes and pallets that went in and came out.

A Giesecke+Devrient BPS 200 banknote processing machine with its output stackers. Photo: Ulumarifah / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Inside a cash center today

Cash remains a large business while card payments grow. On 30 September 2026 Reuters reported that the UK competition regulator had raised concerns about Brink's $6.6 billion takeover of NCR Atleos, the ATM company, and Brink's offered to sell its NoteMachine ATM unit to win approval. By 8 October the Wall Street Journal reported that UK regulators were ready to clear the deal. Companies are spending billions to own the vans, ATMs and cash centres that keep notes moving, and every note they handle by hand adds cost.

A cash transport van parked outside a Commerzbank branch in Bremen, 2024. Photo: JoachimKohler-HB / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

G+D says its BPS C5evo sorter has a nominal throughput of 63,000 notes an hour, while one operator feeding it by hand reaches only 30 to 40 percent of that, and the machine has to stop whenever the operator falls behind. That gap is why robots are moving into the loading and packing around the sorter. G+D describes a central bank cell where one robot arm groups shrink-wrapped bundles into packs of four and a second straps and labels each pack. Its NotaTray Loading module uses a robotic gripper to feed the sorter from a buffer of up to 40,000 notes.

Banknote processing at the Central Bank of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, 2010. Photo: SchmiAlf / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Vaults are being automated as well. At its Seoul headquarters the Bank of Korea uses palletizing robots, pallet lifters and automated guided vehicles to put notes on vault shelves and bring them back out. ABB is not named in any of these projects, but its existing robots could do the same jobs: an IRB 460 or IRB 660 palletizer stacking cash packs, an IRB 1300 or a GoFa CRB 15000 cobot loading trays into a sorter, and Flexley Mover robots pushing trolleys between rooms. A cell like that would normally be laid out and tested first in RobotStudio.

An ABB IRB 660 palletizer, the kind of robot that could stack packed cash bundles. Photo: ABB

Where cash center automation goes next

The direction is a fully automated centre. Bank Central Asia in Indonesia worked with G+D on a cash centre where automation replaced most manual tasks, and the bank calls it the first fully automated cash center for commercial banking in the world. In such a centre deposits arrive in standard containers, robots open them and feed the sorters, sorted notes are packed and labelled, and mobile robots carry the packs into an automated vault. People supervise the line and handle anything damaged, suspicious or out of the ordinary.

The ABB Flexley Mover P604, which navigates with 3D Visual SLAM. Photo: ABB

Packaging may change too. The European Central Bank expects euro notes back in bundles of 1,000, banded in packs of 100, so every band has to be put on and later taken off again. G+D argues that loose notes in standard trays would let machines skip much of that banding and wrapping, and the Hungarian national bank adopted its NotaTray system in 2022. A rigid tray is also easier for a robot gripper than a soft, slightly uneven bundle. Homes feel this only indirectly, through ATMs and shop cash recyclers, much as people noticed robots in coin minting only through the coins in their pockets.

Strapped bundles of 20 and 50 euro notes delivered by a cash logistics company. Photo: BrayLockBoy / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Cost is the first hurdle. Cash use is falling in many countries, so a bank has to be sure a robot cell pays back before volumes drop further. Security comes next. A cash centre is a vault, and every robot, network link and software update has to pass strict audit and access rules, with tools like SafeMove limiting where an arm may reach. Skills are the last problem: the staff who once counted notes will need training to run, program and repair the machines that replace the counting.

An ABB GoFa CRB 15000 cobot at a work table. Photo: ABB

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