Patent ID: 7314160

Claim:
An automatic money transaction machine for handling bills, comprising: a receipt/payment opening, at which bills are received and paid; a discriminating unit for deciding truth or falsehood of bills; a temporary accumulation section for temporarily storing bills as deposited; a conveyance path, along which bills are conveyed between the receipt/payment opening and the discriminating unit and the temporary accumulation section; energizing drive means provided on the conveyance path between the receipt/payment opening and the temporary accumulation section for application of tensile or compressive forces in a direction horizontally perpendicular to a direction of conveyance in a plane of a bill; bill image acquiring means provided close to the energizing drive means for acquiring an image of a bill, to which tensile or compressive forces are applied by the energizing drive means; and state distinguishing means for distinguishing a state of a bill on the basis of bill image data acquired by the bill image acquiring means.