The Group Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of leading pan-African bank, United Bank for Africa Plc. (UBA), Mr. Kennedy Uzoka has eventually opened up on issues surrounding bank charges for Automated Teller Machine (ATM) transactions.
Uzoka said that, “The ATM business in Nigeria requires a lot of reviews. You know, those who say that you withdraw the charges need to understand that we are in a peculiar environment.”
“We all go abroad, UBA operates in London for instance and wants to put an ATM, we just tell the ATM provider, get a space, you put the ATM, everything is there.”
“In Nigeria, you buy an ATM, you pay import duties to bring it because they come from abroad, we don’t manufacture ATM in Africa. Three, you have to put power, sometimes, you have two generators, inverters, these all cost money.”
“But we in the industry believe we need to serve our customers, so ATM is not a profitable business for us, but we believe at some point, it will be reconsidered.”
“If you remove the little charge (because today you can do three transactions without being charged), I don’t think that will affect our bottom line. Because, we in UBA see ATM as a channel to make our customers happy. So, whatever will make our customers happy will make them patronise us more.”
