Sharing infrastructure to save on operation costs is a sensible idea, an example is what banks did with Pesapoint ATMS. It makes bank increase revenue from non-competitive payment infrastructures like ATMS and Pont of Sale terminals. Paynet, an independent financial services provider that processes withdrawals and bill payments transactions on ATMs notes the number of competing ATMs in the banking industry locally has grown to 600 interconnected ATMs in the last 6 months.
Pesapoint is the cog in the interconnection wheel and thus is converting the bank ATMs into universal sach machines useable by any card holder at low Pesapoint fees.
“Already 6 banks are interconnected through the new PesaPoint interconnection system which is converting ATMs belonging to banks into PesaPoint cash machines ensuring other banks card holders can transact on these ATMs at low fees,” says Bernard Matthewman, CEO of Paynet Group .
Early adopters on this platform include KCB, CFC Stanbic and Diamond Trust Bank.
“We have the PesaPoint network linking our ATMs to about 32 other financial institutions at very affordable costs,” confirmed Dr. Martin Odour-Otieno , KCB Group Chief Executive.
Previously, a cardholder connecting to another bank from a KCB ATM had to part with between Ksh 150 and Ksh 200, as this connection relied on an international network but will now only pay a third of that for the same transaction.
