The Central Bank allowed to conduct encashment without bill collectors: the depositaries for revenues will be installed in shops

This instruction No. 3353-U of the Central Bank will come into force on the 1^st of November 2014

The Central Bank has granted an alternative way of earnings deposit, which does not involve the bill collectors and the workers of the credit institution cash desk. Now the companies can submit funds via the automated self-service devices – the automated safes and ATMs, previously used only for individual’s purposes, deposit machines and informational/payment terminals. This is stated in the Instruction of the Central Bank (No. 3353-U) which will come into force on November 1, 2014. The Sberbank, being subordinate to the regulator is intended to promote this way of self-encashment in shopping malls, but this increases the danger for the company’s employees, because they should go to such devices and submit cash into it.

According to the Central Bank’s instruction, for self-encashment in such way a company should sign a contract with the bank, open a checking account, receive a personal code and password which help to identify the company when performing the operations via the self-service devices. The code and password are issued by the settlement bank but can be used for submitting cash via the terminals of other credit institutions. Now the self-encashment services are offered by a number of banks – for example, SDM-bank, Binbank, SB Bank. The Central Bank states the rules of self-encashment by its new instruction.

The automatic safes resemble the outlines of ATMs with the only difference that they can contain more cash and they are able to recognize four security features of the banknotes (this requirement to the ATMs will come into force in July 1, 2015). When submitting cash, the company’s employee enters personal code, password and the bank account, where the money is credited. After that the employee receives the quittance of the transaction. This report contains data about the company, bank, device identifier, date and time of crediting, bank account and the amount of money entered. The banknotes fall into the encashment sack. When the door opening is requested a specialized mechanism closes the sack with money.

An average fee for automatic encashment is 0.2% of the sum. It is supposed that small companies (with daily turnover less than 100 thousand rubles) could save on encashment service (which cost from 0.2 to 2% of the amount) and crediting via the bank’s cash desks (the fee for this transaction is 0.2-0.3 % of the sum). The clients are not time constrained, they can submit funds in any convenient time, because the automatic encashment devices are installed within the company’s territory. The sum is credited to the account automatically.

The shopping malls where many small retail facilities are situated, are the focus format for the self-encashment devices, because this enables to minimize the bank’s expenses for service of these points (bill collectors don’t have to visit these points in the whole building and spend a lot of time for this), and also to offer to clients reasonable prices and flexible schedule of cash submitting, – the Sberbank’s press relations service informed (it has already installed more than 150 such devices). – Also it should be noted that the self-service devices installed in such shopping malls will not be referenced to any particular client. There could be any number of users. A transaction takes less than a minute for any type of device (automatic strongbox, ATM, depositary module) and involves the identification of payer and submitting of money to the cash acceptor.

Sberbank underlines that the self-encashment eases the employees of the credit institutions. The company claims that the devices can accept cash from 30 clients in 20 minutes, whereas it takes 5 minutes for each of them in an office (150 minutes totally). According to the state bank’s representatives, the expenses of all parties are minimized because the «encashment strongboxes» are usually situated in the security service area of attention. Moreover, the 24-hour work enables to submit cash after the closure of the shopping mall, this eliminates the possibility of presence of unauthorized persons, as think in Sberbank.

– All self-service devices have a high level of protection and are securely attached to the floor, – add the state bank representatives.

– The banks are interested in developing these services, – says Alexander Novikov, the director of the department of remote banking of Binbank. – Our expenses on security and insurance are a bit more than for a common ATM. Now we implement the «Electronic cashier» project with the same logic – the electronic cash desks are installed at the work place.

As Igor Komiagin, the managing director of SB notes, the main problem of the majority of self-service devices is insufficient strongbox capacity, which often results in the need to collect money nearly every day by the bank.

– But now the automated, performant and capacious devices are entering the market. They can accept big amounts of cash from the unlimited number of clients if operated properly, – says Komiagin. – An average price for the device is several thousands of euros, that’s why a part of the expenses is included in tariffs. One more advantage of the service – the cash become operable by the client immediately after the crediting. The client can administer them straight away, for example, to make an urgent payment via the e-bank.

A number of banks find no sense to install automatic strongboxes in addition to ATMs.

– We considered the connection scheme for the automated strongboxes for installation within the clients’ territory, but the technology requires significant expenses and payback time is not clear, – says Vladimir Bogomolov, the head of the methodology and corporate products of the «Renaissance» bank. – And the more so high profitability will be gained only from big clients, and the encashment will be also necessary.

According to Timur Gimbatov, the fraud control strategy director, the physical tampering of the ATM (or terminal, more often) and the theft of the device prevail in his region.

– Consequently, the risk of similar attacks of the devices containing money of the companies is increasing. This means that it is referred to bigger amounts of cash than in case of individuals, – Gimbatov says.

Komiagin says that the tampering of the strongbox is possible regardless of its protection class – this is the matter of time and technical means applied by the safecrackers, but these devices are usually installed in well-controlled areas with video surveillance, and also they are insured.

– The cash entering into these devices at the end of the day is convenient for the clients, – says Andrey Zhuravlev, the chairman of the «Business Russia» branch department of checkout and payment systems. – The collection of cash is not mandatory and the solution is taken by the owner of the retail point on his own responsibility. In big shopping malls one highly performant device can be installed for all the retail points. In would take less than two minutes to submit the daily proceeds into the device. But in this case a schedule of cash submitting should be made, or several devices instead. If in a shopping mall where there are 100 retail points all of them would come to submit cash, the queue will be very big. If this innovation will get widespread, the encashment services of the competitor banks will lose.

The asked retailers have cautious attitude to innovations related to their cashflow. For example, the M.Video company received warily the Central Bank’s initiative – in particular, if only one such device will be installed in the whole shopping mall.

– Essentially, the shopping mall in this case will be obliged to create a money depository according to the Central Bank standards and invest large amounts in its security, – as think the company’s employees. – Potentially, these expenses can also affect the freestanding shops. The expenses for encashment across the board in the market are minimum and so the economy will not be significant from this perspective.

Source: IZVESTIYA