News

Bangladesh central bank promises easing of ATM install regs

March 18, 2013

Following complaints that its recent tightening of procedures for setting up ATMs was hindering the speed of installations, Bangladesh Bank has promised to ease procedures to address the problem.

Previously, all a bank needed to set up a new ATM was a rented site and permission from the installing bank's board or, making the process even faster, the board's designated sub-body for authorization, said a story by the Financial Express.

But last November, the central bank issued rules saying that the bank must secure a site, obtain approval from the bank's board and then submit the installation request to Bangladesh Bank for consideration.

Bankers are now complaining that property owners aren't willing to hold a site for up to two months without a commitment from the bank, and banks don't want to make a commitment to lease a site without assurance that their request would be approved by the central bank — thus creating a Catch-22 for ATM installations.

As a result, some large commercial banks are simply curtailing installations, the FE article said. This, in turn, is hampering the Bangladesh government's goal of bring unbanked citizens into the financial system by making ATM-based banking more readily accessible.

Bangladesh Bank executive director Dasgupta Asim Kumar told the publication that following a meeting with banks representatives who raised concerns about the approval policy, that the central bank would loosen the new rules. "We will take measures soon to make the ATM installation procedure easier and speedy," he said.

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