Banks are paying Microsoft big bucks to keep XP-powered ATMs running

Well played, major banks! You’ve ignored Microsoft’s warnings and now you’re going to have to pay them a ton of cash to support Windows XP on your ATMs after official support runs out on April 8th. According to NCR, one of the few companies that actually makes ATMs, roughly two-thirds of the roughly 2.2 million bank machines in the world are still running Windows XP.

Banks around the world, consumed with meeting more stringent capital regulations, will miss a deadline to upgrade outdated software for automated teller machines (ATMs) and face additional costs to Microsoft to keep them secure. The U.S. software company first warned that it was planning to end support for Windows XP in 2007, but only one-third of the world’s 2.2 million ATMs which use the system will have been upgraded to a new platform, such as Windows 7 by the April deadline, according to NCR, one of the biggest ATM makers.