Bank “debit cards” only began to spread in 1983 thanks to the ATM circuit, an emanation of the Italian Banking Association (ABI). In a few years we have moved from the magnetic stripe to the greater security of microchips thanks to which we have arrived at “contactless” cards which are used simply by bringing them close to the POS reader without making physical contact. The operation of the circuits is limited to Italy and concerns debit or prepaid cards which are issued directly by banks and operators who have obtained the license from Bancomat Spa which since 2008 has been entrusted with the management of the use of the Bancomat and PagoBancomat. Having been the first and most widespread banking circuit in Italy, Bancomat is the term par excellence with which automatic teller machines (known in much of the world as ATM, Automated Teller Machine) are improperly called in Italy. In particular, Bancomat is the domestic circuit for withdrawing cash from ATMs while “PagoBancomat” is the domestic circuit for paying for goods or services via POS terminals or ATM terminals enabled for payment. The first logo in 1983, designed by Pier Paolo Cornieti, depicted a seagull to evoke the freedom of withdrawal and payment outside bank opening hours; clearly the gray animal was positioned so as to display the initial letter “B” of the denomination, inside a blue diamond. The logotype was composed of slanted capital letters and colored blue.

In 1995 the Italian Banking Association (ABI) registered, first, the Bancomat logo and then the PagoBancomat logo as collective trademarks, allowing their use by all the banks associated with it; in that year the Univisual agency was appointed to normalize the identity system in order to regulate its use by banking institutions. Due to the absence of an original design of both the logo and the seagull symbol, the intervention produced, specifically, three versions of use of the Bancomat brand (the horizontal version, the vertical version and the card version).

With the transformation into a joint stock company, in 2021 the logo was restyled with a more synthetic solution of the seagull and renewed lettering; in order to be increasingly synonymous with freedom and to constantly respond to new customer needs.