Cash-based transactions lift demand
Some 20 years since commissioning their first automated teller machines, mainland banks remain among the world's laggards in adopting self-service banking.
But the presence of ATMs is expected to pick up pace as demand from consumers and competition drive the rapid deployment of more advanced models across the country over the next three years, say analysts.
The number of ATMs on the mainland is projected to climb to 233,000 units by the end of 2010 from 102,000 last year, according to a report from New York research and advisory firm Celent.
Driving the growth will be the largely cash-based transaction system on the mainland, the low density of bank branches at a time when demand for financial services is accelerating, and the need to deploy ATMs more aggressively beyond the largest metropolitan centres to mid-sized and small cities and suburban regions, said Wenli Yuan, senior analyst and co-author of the Celent report.
The pace of that deployment is expected to be matched by supply from leading ATM manufacturers in the country, including market leader NCR and Diebold from the United States, Germany's Wincor Nixdorf International, mainland firm GRG Banking Equipment, and Japan's Hitachi-Omron Terminal Solutions Corp.