Bancnet recruits first RB

Banco San Juan (BSJ) registered a first when it reportedly became the first rural bank to hook up with an ATM (automatic teller machine) consortium. Bancnet Inc. recruited BSJ as the first rural bank to join the consortium composed of several universal and commercial banks in the country.

Actually, the rural bank started operating its ATM machines at the start of the fourth quarter quietly as it celebrated its 50th anniversary.

"With its network of 30 branches, its membership in the Bancnet consortium surely makes it the country’s rural bank where clients can access their accounts anytime and anywhere in the country, where there are BancNet or Megalink ATMs," it said in a statement.

Aside from balance inquiries and cash withdrawals, bank clients can make cash advance transactions from all BSJ and BancNet ATMs, using their credit cards as well as experience the convenience of changing their personal identification number (PIN) or requesting for printout of their statement of accounts.

BSJ’s Kidlat Kard would soon let clients pay their bills at any BSJ Kidlateller ATMs and over 3,500 other BancNet and Megalink ATMs nationwide through the Bills Payment Facility at no extra fees.

Likewise, bank clients will soon experience the convenience of cashless shopping at any BancNet point-of-sale (POS) terminals located in supermarkets, department stores, convenience stores and other business establishments as its credit card would be good as cash with no interest and extra charges.

They could buy prepaid phone loads and Internet prepaid loads, re-order checkbooks, as well as experience the convenience of making fund transfers through the IBFT (inter-bank fund transfer) facility.

Other then the ATMs, BSJ invested heavily in upgrading its information technology (IT) infrastructure such as security hardware and software. In fact, BSJ’s ATMs and security hardwares are already compliant and ready for the new EPP, EMV, and Triple-Data Encryption Standard (DES) security and technology requirements, which are expected to be required standards by 2004-2005.