Use case analysis for automated teller machine services

¶ … Automated Teller Machine Servicing

The use of ATM in a retail banking system has become a revolutionized technology that assists banks to facilitate banking transactions and free customers from a lengthy queue. Moreover, the ATM technology has facilitated the global integration for fund transfer, withdraw and deposit because it assists bank customers to travel to any part of the world to complete the banking transactions using their ATM cards (Alexander, & Maiden, 2004). Despite the benefits associated with the ATM technology, nevertheless, the ATM system requires developing a use case to support for the ATM system.

The use case is a technique to identify functional requirements of a software system to assist in effective functioning of ATM services. Typically, use case is an important concept representing user objectives, which can either be a graphical form or textual form. The benefit of use case is that it assists in describing a system from external point-of-view rather than from developer point-of-view. (Some, 2010). Thus, a use case analysis is a technique of finding functional requirements of information system or software system, and the case model assists the stakeholders in four ways: Planning iterative development, capturing requirements, validating systems, and verifying systems. (Mall, 2004).

Objective of this project is develop Use Cases software to support ATM service for a retail bank. The paper discusses the logical strategies of designing the use case to deposit, withdraw and transfer funds using the ATM system.

Event of Withdrawing Money with ATM

This section provides the narrative event of a customer withdrawing his or her money using the ATM card, and the case and actor are used for the narrative. The use case illustrates a series of action that offers something, which is measurable in value. On the other hand, an actor is an organization, person or external person who interacts with the system. In essence, an actor is referred as a user. Association between use cases and actors is an interaction between the use case and actor. (Senthil, Arun, & Vijaya, 2011).

The ATM (Automated Teller Machine) is a banking subject or subsystem that provides banks' clients with access to withdraw their funds and perform other financial transactions at public space without the assistance of a bank teller or cashier. Customers (actors) are allowed to use their bank ATM to check balances from their bank accounts. Moreover, a customer can use their bank ATM to withdraw cash, deposit funds, or transfer funds to another account. ATM technicians also provides repairs and maintenance when needed. However, all the mentioned use cases required Bank actor related to ATM servicing and customer transactions. (Rajaraman, 2004). The ATM user interface displays screen; keypad cash dispenses as well as deposit slot. The ATM session reveals authenticate user and execute financial transactions.

Fig.1: Illustration of Use Case of Fund Withdrawal using ATM Card

As being revealed in Fig 1, the following case document provides the steps by which a bank customer withdraws money from an ATM. In the use case, the paper capitalizes the Actors Names:

The use case starts when the Client inserts his ATM card into the ATM slot.

The System reads all the information in the ATM card.

The System reads and validates the information from the ATM card.

The System prompts for the PIN.

The Client inputs the PIN.

The System validates the PIN

The System asks the type of operations that the clients intends to perform.

The Client selects the "Cash withdrawal"

The System prompts and displays the amount to withdraw.

The Client enters the amount to withdraw.

The System displaces "saving," "checking," "saving," or "credit" account types and asks the Client to select one account for withdrawal.

The Client selects type of the account type for withdrawal.

The System validates the PIN, account ID, and amount requested for withdrawal by communicating with the ATM network.

The System asks whether the Client wants a receipt.

The System pushes out the card and asks the Client to remove his card.

The Client pulls out the card.

The System dispenses out the requested cash.

The System prints the receipt out.

The Client is asked to pull out the receipt.

Ends the Transfer use case.

However, Account Withdrawal may not be successful if the Customer inputs the wrong PIN. In this scenario, the ATM will notify the customer that he/she has input a Wrong Pin. Moreover, if the amount in the account is below the requested fund to Withdraw, the system will display the error code.

Event of Making Account Deposit

The use case discusses the method of depositing money into a bank account. To deposit money, the Bank Customer puts the his or her intended money in an envelope and inserts the envelope into the Bank ATM. The Bank stores all envelopes in the bank safety box and later to be verified by the Cashier.

Event of Making Account Transfer

The use case reveals the method of making account transfer from the bank account. The process of transferring funds between bank accounts involves different processes. While some of the processes are similar to the fund deposit or fund withdrawal, some of the processes are different. As being revealed in Fig 3, the use case to make account transfer is as follows:

Fig.3: Illustration of Use Case of Making Account Transfer

The use case starts when the Client inserts his ATM card into the ATM slot.

The System reads all the information in the ATM card.

The System reads and validates the information from the ATM card.

The System prompts for the PIN.

The Client input the PIN.

The System validates the PIN

The System asks the type of operations that the clients intends to perform.

The Client selects the "Transfer Funds." "

The ATM asks for the account to withdraw from The ATM asks the account to deposit

The ATM asks the amount to transfer

The Bank Customer enters both the account and amount to transfer.

The System sends the card id, the PIN, amount as well as account to the Bank Consortium.

The Bank Consortium replies the transaction revealing that the transfer is accepted.

The System pushes out the card

The Client pulls out the card.

The System prints the receipt out.

The Client is asked to pull out the receipt.

Ends the Transfer use case.

However, Account Transfer may not be successful if the Customer inputs the wrong PIN, and the ATM will notify the customers that they have input a Wrong Pin. Moreover, the System will display Wrong Account number if the Customer input invalid account. The System will also display the error code if the amount to be transferred into another account is above the fund in the account that Customer intends to transfer from.

5. Ethical Issue related to the use of the ATM System

The use of ATM system exposes the connection to numerous ethical issues. First, the use of ATM can expose the ATM to fraud or theft. The bank criminals use different strategies to commit ATM crimes, which include card skimming, card swapping, vandalism. For example, criminals can force individuals attempting to use the ATM in an isolated and quiet area to insert ATM at a gun point and force the person to withdraw large amount of money. Moreover, a criminal can vandalize the machine by modifying the machine to commit fraud. The card swapping refers to the strategy of committing fraud where the criminals monitor a bank customer when entering the PIN code. Afterwards, the criminal will swap the customer ATM card. The ATM skimming involving tampering with the ATM card by placing an additional ATM card reader over the original card reader thereby commits a fraud. Thus, bank customers should keep their PIN code secret when using the ATM card.

Conclusion

The project discusses a use case to withdraw, deposit, and transfer fund using the ATM card. Effective design of the use case assists in the transfer, deposit and withdraw of fund while preventing fraud in the ATM system.

Reference

Alexander, I., & Maiden, N. (2004). Scenarios & use cases: Stories through the system life-cycle. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley.

Mall, R. (2004). Fundamentals of software engineering. London: Prentice-Hall.

Rajaraman, V. (2004). Analysis and design of information systems.London: Prentice-Hall.

Senthil Kumaran, U. U., Arun Kumar, S. S., & Vijaya Kumar, K. K. (2011). An Approach to Automatic Generation of Test Cases Based on Use Cases in the Requirements Phase. International Journal On Computer Science & Engineering, 3(1), 102-113.

Some, S. S. (2010). Formalization of Textual Use Cases Based on Petri Nets. International Journal Of Software Engineering & Knowledge Engineering, 20(5), 695-737.