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Is this supposed to be surprising ? The link between online and physical purchases and the ability to link and support increased sales is something analytics companies have been telling Merchants to do for the last few years either with their own data or from their acquirers as value added servicing.  I guess the "secretive" nature is supposed to be the surprising aspect, but is anyone really that surprised ?

it would be interesting to also find out how many Branches have transformed to not support over the counter cash services, i.e. making them mainly information and sales outlets than the teller cash servicing. I continue to read the number of ATMs is declining, but I wonder what the trend is in terms of absolute number of Self-Servicing devices.

I think this "Banks being required to offer cash via Branches and ATMs" regulation is likely to come under increasing pressure in the next few years. Living in the Netherlands, I have seen personally the reduction in the need for cash as the roll-out of contactless terminals at Merchants has made it increasing easy to pay even small amounts via Card. I can easily see ATM services being pooled again between Banks in order to reduce operating costs. I suspect the Banks will not want to move to complete 3rd party ATM servicing, but will share IT solutions and keep their own Bank profile on the device.  I think the idea of a few years ago of the ATM being the great advestisting / cross-selling touchpoint from Banks to Clients is well dead.