Legislation on the single chain of ATMs run by the Central Bank to be drafted by July 1: Central Bank Governor

The draft legislation on the single chain of ATMs run by the country’s Central Bank will be submitted to the Parliament in the fall, KazTAG reports, citing Central Bank Governor Gregory Marchenko as saying. “The Central Bank is to draft the legislation by July 1 to be further considered by the Government and ultimately submitted to the Parliament in the fall”, Mr. Marchenko said May 24. According to him, Halyk Bank and Kazkommerts Bank, the two largest banks of Kazakhstan, have opposed to the initiative, with smaller banks speaking in favor of the initiative. “I believe we should work out an option acceptable for most of the country’s banks”, he said. Earlier Kazakhstan’s President Nursultan Nazarbayev tasked the National Bank [the country’s Central Bank] to draft suggestions on launching a single system of ATMs. According to Gregory Marchenko, the suggested single system of ATMs will enable to cut down the service fee twofold as compared to the current average rate. “In almost all shopping malls there are 10 ATMs on average. Some run out of cash, some are broken. People have to withdraw money using ATMs owned by other banks. The idea is to buy out all the ATMs from commercial banks. From that on ATMs will be handling cards issued by all banks”, Tengrinews.kz cited Mr. Marchenko as saying earlier. “The National Bank should run a single system of ATMs across Kazakhstan to make sure the service fee is the same (…) It’s quite understandable that smaller banks mostly support the suggestion, whereas bigger banks that own an expanded network of ATMs are opposed (…) The latter are trying to defend their interests. But we should understand that interests of people prevail over interests of a handful of bigger banks (…)”, Mr. Marchenko believes.