Use of ATMs in Guyana constrained by interoperability-Report

Apr 15, 2018 News

There are only 21 Automated Teller Machines and 159 Point Of Sale (POS) devices for every 100,000 adults in Guyana. And apart from Visa co-branded cards, neither the ATMs nor the POSs are interoperable.
This is according to the National Payment System Implementation Plan that was released by Finance Minister, Winston Jordan, last week. The economist noted that Bank of Guyana would be the entity leading the plan.
The report which was prepared by Bank of Guyana and the World Bank notes that the number of ATMs and POS devices available to specific customers is further constrained by the lack of interoperability across the card industry in Guyana.
It said that each commercial bank issues its own cards and operates its own ATM and POS access networks. Some of the bank issued cards are co-branded with one of the major international card brands. The report says that these cards do offer interoperability across ATM and POS networks that accept VISA cards.
Domestic transactions on Visa co-branded cards are settled through the Visa Net Settlement System. Domestic transactions on domestic cards that are not cobranded with Visa are cleared and settled in house, or in the case of the internationally owned banks, abroad via the parent bank’s card settlement system. It said that internationally transactions on the co-branded cards are settled overseas in the systems of the international card companies.
Bank of Guyana noted that the commercial banks are working with VISA to establish interoperability of the domestic cards and the ATM / POS networks in the country.
“Each commercial bank has or is working to achieve VISA certification so that each can issue VISA co-branded cards. Once the process is completed, domestic transactions using the co-branded cards will be processed via an overseas VISA card switch.
It is unclear what fees VISA will charge for this service or what fees will be charged by the acquiring bank for the use of its ATM/POS networks by holders of cards issued by other banks.”
Furthermore, the report said that in contrast, commercial banks report 335,014 of the debit cards they’ve issued are active. That is one card for every seven adults in Guyana. Adults report that on average it takes 18 minutes for them to travel to an ATM they can use.”
“This is the same amount of time it takes, on average, for an adult to reach a collection office and only two minutes shy of the 20 minutes it takes to get to a bank branch or agent outlet.
“The primary advantage of the ATMs in this regard is that adults, on average, report wait times of only five minutes at ATMs. This compares quite favourably to the 20-minute wait times reported for bank branches, agent outlets and payment collection offices.”

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