Banks spend N29.7bn on ATM maintenance

Following Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN’s directive that banks should charge users of automated teller machines, some commercial banks had embarked on regular maintenance of their machines, which cost over N29.7 billion annually.
The amount spent on the maintenance, which is done monthly, is for efficiency, to ease congestion in banking halls and to foster the success of the cashless policy of the apex bank.
Contrary to the argument that teller machines are too expensive to maintain, which is the reason some banks believe it was not a profitable business, Information and Communication Technology, ICT, experts blamed the banks for their negligence in not seeing the profitability of the service.
“If the machines are working well, it will reduce the staff strength of the banks, as the malfunctioning process of these machines often lead to congestion in the banking hall and network,” an ICT expert, Mr. Gbenga Shobowale explained.
A top source in the apex bank disclosed that the CBN had known from inception that the commercial banks would not be able to handle the machine payment system effectively, but it had to allow the process to continue to boost the payment system and meet with development in the global financial sector.
Also, in line with the CBN’s cashless policy initiative, stakeholders in the financial sector have criticised the CBN’s deployment of point of sales, PoS, terminals. They described the initiative as an unfavourable policy in the payment system, as banks cannot deploy these terminals on their own.
“It is a bad policy as it does not allow massive deployment and utilisation in enhancing transactions. The distribution of such device should be decentralised and not through banks. The banks have a lot of work to do and adding the distribution of PoS to their responsibilities had overwhelmed them and that is the reason most of them are not working,” another ICT expert, Mr. Tobi Omole, argued.