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.

  11 2 comments

Indonesian banks target islanders with floating ATMs

Editorial

This content has been selected, created and edited by the Finextra editorial team based upon its relevance and interest to our community.

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.

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Comments: (2)

Ketharaman Swaminathan

Ketharaman Swaminathan Founder and CEO at GTM360 Marketing Solutions

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 Director at Payments Culture

Sounds like a good move in this market

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