The American company which has deployed more than half of all automated teller machines in the Philippines remains bullish on its expansion in the country despite the increase in cashless transactions made possible by electronic commerce.
Diebold Nixdorf, the market leader of self-service banking technology in the Philippines that serves more than 40 banks with 11,500 ATMs or 58 percent of the total nationwide, believes that it is well positioned to support the industry’s expansion.
It has a team of over 400 associates around the Philippines, while its service call center team supports over 250 field techs through a dedicated helpdesk and an in-house depot repair center in Makati. It established its presence in the country in 2003 to take advantage of the growth potential in the banking sector where 70 percent of households did not have bank accounts.
Diebold Nixdorf Philippines president and country manager Julius Servando says the Philippines is a growing market for the company. A study by consulting firm RBR predicts that the country will see a rise in ATM deployment by 48 percent to 29,400 terminals by 2022, from the current 19,851 terminals.
“What sets us apart from other competitors is our ability to service ATMs and use terminals outside the metros because we do have engineers in those areas 7/24,” Servando says.
Servando says the company is also instrumental in bringing the government aid closer to the country’s less unfortunate families who benefit from the conditional cash transfer program of the Social Welfare Department.
Diebold Nixdorf is also one of the first companies to bring in financial solution to Tacloban City after the devastating typhoon Yolanda hit the Visayas in November 2013.
“We were the first to set up an ATM terminal in the province when the Philippine government needed the support of a financial solutions provider like us. They believed in us and we delivered,” says. Servando says that in the retail sector, the Philippines is still far from closing the gap with other countries in the Asia Pacific in terms of e-commerce sales. Data show that of $140 billion in total retail sales in 2017, e-commerce sales accounted for only $3.9 billion or 2.1 percent.
“We have seen mobile penetration contributing to an increase in the e-commerce transaction. We can expect Philippine e-commerce to grow though not as fast as in other markets in Asia. Growth will be measured by the limits of infrastructure on hand and some issues on online security,” Servando says.
“Given this situation and the innate fear of Filipinos to shop on the net especially cashless buying, we see the potential of physical stores still growing. They will be needing support from solution providers like us. We continue to see growth in 30 years,” he says.
Diebold Nixdorf will soon introduce the use of QR codes and biometrics in automated transactions as well as for retail.
A local bank plans to adopt the technology to provide better security for its clients. Deibold is celebrating 15 years in the Philippines with a host of new solutions for both the banking and retail sectors.
Globally, Diebold Nixdorf has the presence in over 130 countries, supported by 15,000 service members and 1,900 software experts.