*About the author: Patrick Avery is the editor of Self-Service World and Kiosk Marketplace, two of ATM Marketplace's sister sites. To submit a comment about this article, please contact Tracy Kitten.
Click here to view a slide show from the ATMIA Asia conference.
With an extra half million people expected in Beijing during each day of the 2008 Olympics, China's banking industry is speeding efforts to give the city's guests easy access to cash. For a country where ATM practices differ greatly from those used in most countries, that means making some changes.
In May, the ATM Industry Association hosted its
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"ATMs in Asia" conference in Beijing to discuss what improvements the country's financial institutions should be making in preparation for the Olympics.
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According to industry experts, most of the country's banks are already working to improve and comply with industry best practices and standards.
"We're not anticipating any major problems relating to ATMs at the Olympics," said Dominic Hirsch, managing director of England-based Retail Banking Research Ltd. "Plenty of previous Olympics have been held without ATMs, and China's banking industry has been gearing up for some time - to roll out more ATMs, increase international acceptance and provide signage and screens in English."
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The People's Bank of China, China's largest bank, has been working to solve one of the country's primary problems with ATMs - queuing. Many people who use ATMs check their balances every day, sometimes twice a day. And the average user tends to do balance inquiries before and after a transaction. With only 64 ATMs per 100 bank branches in China, those practices lead to long lines and prolonged waiting times.
At the ATMIA conference in Beijing, officials from the People's Bank of China said 40 percent of their transactions are deposits, leading to increased queuing. The bank is promoting non-cash payments and daily withdrawal limits, and opening a customer complaint hotline in an effort to improve queuing issues. In addition to the People's Bank of China, many other banks are increasing ATM deployments in an effort to meet the needs of Olympic visitors.
GRG Banking, China's largest ATM manufacturer, is working with banks to supply a larger number of ATMs - the company produces about 10,000 machines a year, said Amy Zhang of GRG Banking's marketing department.
China's UnionPay, or CUP, was founded in 2003 as a unified national switch network provider, allowing users of Visa, Mastercard, American Express and others to link to China's ATMs and allow visitors to process cash transactions. In addition, China's ATMs in the past required a six-digit PIN, rather than the typical four-digit number. Most Chinese banks have fixed that PIN differentiation problem, Zhang said.
ATM suppliers NCR Corp., Diebold Inc., Wincor Nixdorf International and Hitachi-Omron have strategically placed their sights on China in an effort to provide more ATMs, Hirsch said. With 2.6 foreign visitors and 1.5 billion domestic visitors expected for the Olympics, every newly installed ATM will be needed.
"Chinese banks are making great efforts for the coming Olympic games," Zhang said.
