MAC

Operating area	Mid-Atlantic andMidwestern United States
Founded	1979
Defunct	2005
Owner	Concord EFS, Inc. (nowFirst Data Corporation)

Money Access Center (MAC, alsoMoney Access Card) was anATM network in the Mid-Atlantic and Midwestern United States, between 1979 and 2005, when it was absorbed into theSTAR network. The network was one of the first in the nation, and helped universalize ATM banking. At its height MAC operated 59,000 ATMs^[1] inPennsylvania,New Jersey,Delaware,Maryland,West Virginia,Kentucky,Ohio, andMichigan.

MAC was launched in 1979 by the Philadelphia National Bank (PNB), later renamedCoreStates, to compete with the GEORGE network, which was launched one year earlier byGirard Bank.^[2][3] PNB was able to line up support from thirteen other financial institutions at launch, capturing significantly more market share than GEORGE, to the point that the locals preferred the terms "MAC machine" and "MAC card" to "ATM" or "ATM card".

In 1988 CoreStates acquired and integrated MAC competitor CashStream, making MAC the second-largest regional ATM network, behind onlyNYCE.^[4] In 1992 CoreStates created aholding company for MAC, called Electronic Payment Services (EPS), headquartered inWilmington, Delaware. The company was co-owned by CoreStates,Bank One,PNC Bank, andSociety Corporation.^[5] These were later joined byKeyCorp andNational City Corp.^[6]

Through the 1990s EPS expressed its desire to go public, either by issuing anIPO or by being acquired by apublicly traded company.^[7] The latter happened in 1999 when publicly tradedConcord EFS acquired EPS for $920 Million.^[6] This turned out to be a very profitable deal for Concord, so it acquired two more ATM networks in the next two years, Cash Station andSTAR, which expanded Concord's networks to 28 states.^[8] In its press-release about the acquisition of STAR in 2001 Concord announced its intent to consolidate the three networks under the STAR banner due to STAR's better name recognition, making STAR the largest ATM network in the country. The MAC (and Cash Station) banner was to be phased out over a period of four years^[1]

In 2014, JetPay, founded by Bipin Shah, who ran the MAC network while working at CoreStates, announced a product called Money Access Card, a reloadable payment card for JetPay's payroll-processing-company clients.^[9] This product was discontinued when JetPay was acquired byNCR Corporation in 2018.

MAC Machine andMAC Card continue to be used to refer to ATMs and ATM cards respectively as aregionalism in certain parts of Pennsylvania and New Jersey, along with the phrasetap MAC to describe getting money from an ATM.^[10][11]

• Interbank networks
• 1979 establishments in the United States
• 2005 disestablishments in the United States

• CS1 errors: generic name
• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata