Mobile payments app Spare wants to kill the ATM.

Spare is a product of startup Mercuri Systems, headed by entrepreneur D’Ontra Hughes. The idea of Spare is to make businesses, in this case hotels, into cash-dispensers, obviating the need for ATMs, which often carry hefty fees and subject users to the risk of identity theft from card skimmers.

The beta test beginning this week will run for a few months at several Los Angeles-area hotels.

The idea came from when Hughes was working at a large Los Angeles-area hotel that had a popular bar inside. Neither the bar nor hotel lobby had an ATM, so customers had to cross the busy street in front of the hotel to use a third party ATM if they wanted to have cash on hand. Hughes had the insight that it would make more sense if the hotel or bar, both of which had cash behind the counter, could simply dispense it to customers. This is what Spare hopes to accomplish.

The idea has potentially wide-reaching applications. Why would a convenience store or fast-food restaurant, with plenty of cash in the till, give over valuable space to an ATM that collects fees for a third party?

To use Spare, a user enters a request for funds, say $200, in the mobile app, which is linked to a funding source, such as a checking account. When the user arrives at the hotel, which is also linked to the Spare system, he is simply given the $200 when checking in because the hotel knows who he has and has seen the request for funds, which can be added seamlessly to his bill.

In short, Spare is looking to make the movement of money easier, and is leveraging the mobile phone and customers’ need for cash. It is also part of the invisible payments movement headed by Uber — making the presentation of a payment device unnecessary.

It is very early days for Spare, and the results of its beta test will be telling, but the idea seems to make a great deal of sense and eliminates a pain point. It could be a revenue source for businesses and certainly provides convenience to customers, not to mention security from ATM skimmers, though with news of the recent Marriott hack, it seems nothing is safe anymore.

Learn more about what’s next in banking at Bank Innovation 2014 on March 3-4 in Seattle. Request an invitation here.