one atm card for all of bhutan and india
Any local bank ATM card can now be used in any ATM counter all over Bhutan and India. Any Indian ATM card can be used in any Bhutanese ATM counter. Druk PnB ATM can now be used in 100 countries.
Imagine carrying a local bank ATM card and withdrawing money from any ATM counter from anywhere in the country irrespective of which bank it belongs to. Imagine this facility to come with a bonus of being able to use the same card to withdraw money from any ATM counter all over India.
The wait for it is over. From next week, any Bhutanese bank ATM card can be used in any ATM counter all over Bhutan and India. One need not look which bank the counter belongs to.
There is an additional catch for Indians visiting Bhutan. They can also use any Indian bank ATM to withdraw money from any ATM counter in Bhutan.
The biggest good news of all is that the services can be availed without a cost. It is free of charge.
This has been made possible under a system called the Bhutan Financial Switch (BFS), initiated by the Central Bank of Bhutan, Royal Monetary Authority (RMA). Under the financial switch, all commercial banks in the country are linked to each other and to the central bank.
This will allow interoperability of ATM cards in the country while the RMA will be linked to the central bank of India, Reserve Bank of India (RBI), and it will allow local ATM cards to be used in India and Indian ATMs to be used in the country.
The BFS was launched yesterday by Prime Minister Jigme Y. Thinley in Thimphu and it will be effective starting next week.
The interoperability will also apply to Point of Sale (POS) machines in the country. This means that an ATM card holder will now be able to swap his debit cards in any another bank’s POS machines in the country.
According to a deputy governor of the RMA, Eden Dema, the complex and ever changing developments in the financial sector has called for an updated payment and settlement system in the Bhutanese financial market. She said the BFS will create a safe payment system for the public and cut cost for both the client and the bank.
The director of the Information and Communication Technology Department of the RMA, Sherab, said that BFS was conceived for easy banking by pooling the ATM resources of all banks together. He said the objective is to promote inclusive economic growth by capitalizing in the development in information and communication technologies.
There are four local member banks – the Bank of Bhutan Limited (BOBL), Bhutan National Bank Limited, Druk PnB and the T-bank. The banks jointly have about 68 ATMs and 177 POS machines around the country.
These facilities will ease pressure on Bhutanese travelers to India who struggle to get the rupee. With the country experiencing a rupee crunch, it is difficult to get the Indian legal tender even from the banks as they also get a limited supply of the rupee. Along the southern border towns, there are also informal reports of people illegally charging a premium to exchange the ngultrum for the rupee.
Druk PnB goes global
The Druk PnB put the icing on the cake yesterday by launching the Maestro debit card which can be used to withdraw money from any ATM all over the world having a Master, Maestro, or Cirrus logos. This service can be used in 100 countries worldwide.
The Druk PnB launched its Mastero Debit card yesterday and presented its first ever card to the Prime Minister Jigme Y Thinley who formally launched the system.
On the bank going global, the delighted CEO of the bank, N.K. Arora, reiterated that ATM holders of his bank can now withdraw money from around the world.
“Till now, this was possible only to the extent of PnB ATMs in India but from now clients need not go looking for currencies of the country he is visiting,” he said.
RMA launches EFTS
The central bank put another feather in its cap yesterday by launching the Electronic Fund Transfer System (EFTS). This is a move to foster swifter transactions and to encourage paperless, low currency circulation banking. Under the EFTS, loans, utility bills, salary and pension payments will be done electronically, even if the receiver and the payer have accounts in different banks.
According to the director of the Payment and Settlement Department of the RMA, J N Pradhan, the RMA is strongly advocating the use of the system to ensure prompt and reliable payment in the country. “For instance, a person holding a bank account with BOBL will now be able to pay and receive money from any of the branches of BNBL,” he said.
The EFTS has three components – the NECS Credit, the NECS Debit and the Individual Fund Transfer systems.The NECS Credit will allow the payment of salaries of employees of a member institution to the account of all employees irrespective of which bank they have the account in.
Here, an organization can apply to any bank, called the parent bank, to avail the service. The organization can then deposit the salary of all the employees, including those that do not have an account in the bank. The bank will then forward a name list of employees with their bank account numbers in other banks.
Under the NECS Debit, pension and other utility bills can be collected from different payers from various banks to the accounts of one bank.
The Individual Fund Transfer system will allow individuals to receive or make payments in any bank in the country irrespective of the bank where the payer and receiver have accounts with. The service also extends to ones who do not have bank accounts.
In providing the services, the settlement between the banks will be done through the balances that commercial banks must mandatorily maintain with the RMA.
The National Pension and Provident Fund, Bhutan Insurance Limited, and Royal Securities Exchange of Bhutan Limited are among the organizations that have registered with the central bank for the service. The ministry of Finance has also recently joined the system.
Source: businessbhutan