Cold cash
From
The Consumerist:
Rejoice Penguins, Wells Fargo Has An ATM In Antarctica
Wells Fargo is the undisputed leader in Antarctic banking thanks to a pair of ATMs at McMurdo station. Despite the monopoly, the bank acts as a benevolent despot by allowing non-customers to draw cash without a surcharge. But who replenishes the stock of $20s? What happens when the ATMs break? Wells Fargo VP David Parker explained it all in a recent interview.
It turns out McMurdo doesn't get new money, which, for us, would create the overwhelming urge to doodle on bills.First of all, the cash on the ice is recycled. So McMurdo Station (which is the scientists' station there on Antarctica)... any sort of venue, the cash is all recycled, and so there's no cash vendor that has to go down all the time to a regular ATM to replenish the cash volume.�
And repairs?We do send a vendor down about once every two years to do some preventative hardware maintenance on both of the ATMs, to make sure they're operational, change out the belts and that kind of stuff, provide new cartridges�anything else hardware-wise that we would need to make sure that it runs. But as you can imagine getting somebody down there is quite a feat.
Interesting -- a side to science that you don't think about. It would be interesting to see how many times a $20 changes hands and what is the size of the pool of other denominations...
Posted by DaveH at July 25, 2010 1:38 PM