The new branches are part of an A&L strategy designed to encourage customers to use direct banking services, in an attempt to cut the ratio of cost-to-income at its retail bank to under 50% by 2010.

The bank is deploying NCR's Personas with Intelligent Deposit and Personas 70 lobby ATMS to enable customers to deposit cash and cheques directly into the ATM without needing to fill-in a pay in-slip or complete a deposit envelope. Up to sixty notes may be inserted into the ATM in one transaction with the deposited cash immediately credited to the customer's account.

NCR says UK cheques may also be fed directly into the ATM. The printed receipt would include an image of the deposited cheque and cash details.

Tim Neal, project manager, Alliance & Leicester, comments: "The new machines cut down on queuing and have created extra space in our branches for additional customer advisory areas, freeing up counter staff to advise on more complex banking products."

The contract also includes NCR's Aptra Advance NDC software for the ATM channel, second line maintenance and installation services.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.