The Commercial Bank of Ethiopia is to purchase about 420 Automatic Teller Machines and 600,000 electronic payment cards 
at an estimated cost of 100 million birr.
Suppliers from China, India and the United states were among those that tendered technical offers to deliver the ATM’s required by the CBE.
Various international brands were represented by local or regional suppliers including CBM, represented by the local SSC, US brand, Diebold represented by Copy Cat, Wincor represented by Hysen Webgate Information Technology, and Axis represented by MFI Solutions amongst many others.Notable among the participants was the M2M group, represented by MUTI Engineering, which supplied 50 of the 58 ATM machines currently operated by the Commercial Bank.
The proposed purchase of ATM machines will add up to double the number of ATMs currently in operation in the country including those that are operated by the CBE.
The electronic payment cards to be bought by the Commercial Bank will make use of chips instead of magnetic strips and will work for VISA MasterCard or Europay.
A similar interest to that seen in the tender for the ATM machines was observed for the supply of the electronic payment cards. Suppliers such as S2M United, Sufran, and United Systems Integrators took part in the bid opened last week.
The 600,000 electronic cards that CBE currently proposes to purchase will be significantly less then its 2.5 million depositors according to observers.
Source: Addis Fortune
