The Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI) reported on Thursday a 30-percent growth in cash-accepting machine (CAM) transactions, showing that consumer preferences are changing and are shifting to digital-banking services.
BPI Senior Vice President and Head of Electronic Channels Group Manuel Tagaza said they transformed their way of servicing their depositor-clients when they rolled out CAM.
“We saw a 30-percent increase in transactions year-on-year, after our people in the branches teach clients how to use the machines.
“Once they started using them, bank customers no longer like to queue in our banks,” he told reporters.
“We have machines inside Glorietta mall, and we noticed that people would first do CAM transactions before they ride the MRT,” Tagaza said.
BPI targets to deploy 600 CAMs by year-end.
“Next year we will have all our branches equipped with CAM.
“We will end the year with 600 machines,” he said.
“Our goal is to have at least one cash-accepting machine for every branch.
“We made sure that all branches have ATMs [automated teller machines],” he added.
Each CAM unit costs about P1 million. It is more sophisticated and more expensive than the regular ATM machines.
Tagaza, who also chairs the BancNet Operations Committee, said BancNet is monitoring progress on the bank’s Europay, MasterCard, Visa (EMV) compliance.
He said BPI will be EMV-chip card ready before 2017, the deadline set by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas.
“We will be meeting the 2017 deadline for EMV-chip cards. BPI has 7 million ATM cards, and that’s a lot,” he said.