Time for Change
It’s the mid-1960s and somewhere in the UK, the unions were putting pressure on banks to close on Saturday morning.
Most people worked during the week and could not get to the bank, which closed at 3pm on weekdays. They only had Saturday mornings. The banks wanted a way to give working people access to their money when they were closed and the Automated Teller Machine was birthed.
The ATM has been a blessing: Helping banks automate their teller services, improving customer satisfaction, and decreasing congestion in banking halls. But It’s over 60 years and the ATMs are still doing what they did in the beginning.
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Setting up an ATM costs millions; From purchase to maintenance, security and moving cash. With just over 18,000 ATMs to a banking population of 75 million in Nigeria, this presented a huge demand that the banks weren’t meeting.
But meeting the demand wasn’t the only problem; Long ATM queues, lack of availability in rural areas, network issues, lack of cash, lack of maintenance, cards being swallowed and more, reduced it’s relevance.
People looked for alternatives and the Point of Sale Machine was seen as an ideal substitution to cash withdrawals. But the POS system still functions as the ATM, just a movable one and this alternative isn’t short of problems.
Welcome Avivwallet, the world’s first Geo location and payment enabled fintech company with the aim of being a better alternative to the ATM and POS systems without any of their locations.
It is indeed a season of newness, freedom and ease and you are a part of this journey and change in the history of financial services. The time has come.
