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Efforts to expand the number of automated teller machines in Hong Kong could see a big boost this year, under a new initiative to swiftly deploy ATMs as part of a network of all-in-one banking and postal terminals.

NCR, the world’s biggest supplier of ATMs, has teamed up with courier services provider LTF Asia and PCCW, the flagship conglomerate of media and telecommunications mogul Richard Li Tzar-kai, to establish so-called logistics teller machines across the city.

“Participating banks will be able to reduce their ATM deployments costs by about 50 per cent, while expanding their branch locations, generating increased revenue and improving customer experience,” Keith Au, NCR’s general manager for financial services in Hong Kong and Taiwan, told the South China Morning Post.

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Research firm RBR has cited high site rental and operational costs among the reasons for Hong Kong’s small number of ATM installations, which has contracted for three consecutive years after reaching a peak in 2012.

At the end of December 2014, the city’s network of ATMs decreased 76 per cent year on year to 3,322 units.

RBR estimated that Hong Kong only provided 467 ATMs per million people, despite its longstanding reputation as a major financial services hub. The city had a population of 7.29 million people at the end of June last year.

Singapore, with a population of 5.54 million as of June 30, had 501 ATMs per million people.

Au said the logistics teller machine programme would integrate NCR’s advanced ATMs with the automated parcel locker service, marketed under the brand “House of Parcels” or “HOP!”, that was introduced last year by LTF Asia and PCCW Solutions, the information-technology services and business process outsourcing arm of the PCCW group.