PNB ATM cardholders reach one million

The Philippine National Bank’s (PNB) automated teller machine (ATM) cardholder base has broken through the one million mark as of end-October last year, a fitting highlight to cap the bank’s achievements in 2003.

PNB vice president Evelyn Ylagan, head of the bank’s ATM Center, reported that the significant growth of PNB’s cardholder base was attributed to the introduction of special account products such as Priority One Checking Account, the Bagong Bayani ATM cards for overseas Filipino workers (OFWs), and the First Access Savings account.

She said the bank’s introduction of new and innovative products for specific target markets "provided our ATM business the push it needed."

"This is an incredible feat considering that this development was accompanied by the purging of inactive cards," said PNB executive vice-president and retail banking sector chief Ismael R. Sandig. He added that the bank’s vigorous marketing campaign for its new products and the successful passbook-to-ATM account migration drive have both tremendously helped in increasing the number of the bank’s ATM cardholders.

PNB’s ATM cardholder base showed an aggressive rise last year, from just a little over 770,000 in end-Dec. 2002 to 1.012 million as of Oct. 31, 2003. These numbers are expected to increase even further as the bank continues to expand its ATM network. To date, PNB has a total of 206 on-site and off-site ATMs nationwide, with 101 of them in Metro Manila.

A member of the Megalink network, which has an ATM base of 1,457 stations nationwide, PNB Supertellers posted a performance average of 99++percent in terms of controllable approval rate, reply rate and hosting availability of its ATM network facility. With PNB Supertellers topping all three categories under Megalink’s rating system, the ATM-using public has grown to prefer PNB’s ATM cards for their ATM based transactions.