Indonesian banks target islanders with floating ATMs

Indonesian banks target islanders with floating ATMs

An Indonesian bank has come up with a novel way to bring financial services to the archipelago's hundreds of inhabited islands - floating ATMs.

Indonesia is the world's fourth most populous country but only around a fifth of its 250 million inhabitants have bank accounts.

One reason for this is that the country is made up of more than 18,000 islands, 900-odd of which are permanently inhabited.

According to Bloomberg, Bank Rakyat Indonesia is hoping to address the problem by buying four customised boats which will house ATMs and cruise around, acting as floating branches.

Rakyat and Bank Mandiri already send cash to distant islands such as Run via ferry, with armed guards keeping an eye on the money.

Other companies are taking more high-tech approaches to banking Indonesia's disparate population. BlackBerry has introduced a P2P payments service within its BBM instant messaging system that lets users access an account from their phone and make real-time payments from within the app to their contacts.

Comments: (2)

Ketharaman Swaminathan
Ketharaman Swaminathan - GTM360 Marketing Solutions - Pune 26 May, 2014, 17:211 like 1 like

India's largest bank, State Bank of India, has been running floating ATMs for around 5 years in Kerala, an Indian state with a lot of backwaters. 

Matt Jones
Matt Jones - Payments Culture - London 27 May, 2014, 10:12Be the first to give this comment the thumbs up 0 likes

Sounds like a good move in this market

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