Kazakh second-tier banks continue installing ATMs despite growing cashless payments
The ATMs network of banks has been expanded by 17% within the year in Kazakhstan, despite the fact that non-cash payments have overtaken cash withdrawals from cards in September, Finprom.kz reports.
The country has seen non-cash payments exceeding cash withdrawn as the cashless turnover amounted to 1.4 trillion tenge, while cash withdrawn totalled at 1.3 trillion tenge in September 2019. Cashless payments increased from 43.9% to 51.7% within the month, against 31.7% a year earlier.
Following 9 months of 2019, the cash amount withdrawn in Kazakhstan is still higher than the non-cash payments, despite the yearly decrease to 58.4% in the amount of cash taken from payment cards compared to almost 90% five years ago.
In January - September of 2019, 11.7 trillion tenge were taken from cards through ATMs and POS terminals, 22% up over the same period last year, with the annual growth rate of cash withdrawals averaging 22.4%.
Almaty, the country’s financial hub, has seen the highest yearly growth of 40.8% in cash withdrawals, up to 3.2 trillion tenge, representing 27.5% of the total cash withdrawals. Turkestan region and Shymkent have observed the second highest annual increase of 31.3% in cash withdrawals, up to 1.1 trillion tenge.
The Kazakh capital, Nur-Sultan, has also witnessed the 16.9% yearly increase in cash withdrawals, amounting to 1.3 trillion tenge.
Nearly 10 trillion tenge was cashed out through ATMs, by 21.1% up compared with January – September 2018. 1.8 trillion tenge was withdrawn via payment cards, growing by 27.1% within the year. So ATMs account for 84.5% of all funds cashed in Kazakhstan using payment cards.
Despite the growing cashless payments, the second-tier banks of Kazakhstan keep on expanding their ATM network as at the end of September there has been a 16.5% increase in ATMs to 11.6 thousand. The growth was due to the increased ATMs with the cash-in function: ( ain increase by 77.1%, to 4.5 thousand), while ATMs without cash-in declined by 4%, to 7.1 thousand.
Noticeable increases in ATMs were seen in Almaty region - by 31.8%, up to 560 ATMs, in Turkestan and Shymkent - by 28.1%, up to 938 ATMs, in Kyzylorda region - by 23.6%, up to 398 ATMs.
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