Do Digital Payments Inevitably Increase Financial Inclusion?

Geldmaat spoke at the ATMIA summit following on directly after the Dutch National Bank. It described how it came into being and the challenges it faces.

With cash volumes falling in the Netherlands the decision was taken by three big banks to combine their ATM networks into a new, separate organisation called Geldmaat. 9,000 ATMs were migrated to a network of 5,000 machines for notes, coins, withdrawals and deposits. The new system had one common user screen and was run on a new platform rather than using what had existed previously.

Location

A location policy was established so that, as the crow flies, every home was within 5 km of an ATM. To complicate the task, the ATMs could not now be located as part of bank branches. The decision was made that they should be where people actually need and want to spend their money.