Saudis and residents rely more and more on their ATM cards to keep cash for frequent everyday items. An official with Cash and Valuables Secure Transport (CVST) told the Saudi Gazette it is normal for many ATMs to be restocked twice a day in Ramadan. Data from the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency (SAMA), the official money and banking data guru, shows an 82 percent increase in the number of ATMs operating in the Kingdom. By the end of Q1/2011, the total number of ATMs grew from about 6,100 at the end of 2006, to more than 11,000. The number of ATM cards issued, over the same period, increased from about 10 million to 13 million, registering a rise of about 30 percent. A source with Al-Majal, one of three licensed and authorized cash and valuables transport companies, told the Saudi Gazette that about 60 percent, or about 6,750 of all ATMs operating in the Kingdom are in just two cities - Riyadh and Jeddah. “We restock ATMs more frequently in Ramadan than other days of the year and not all ATMs have equal cash stores. In some locations we have stand-by vehicles to restock an ATM as soon as we get the signal,” added the source. The signal, to which the source referred, is a satellite-fed, coded message sent from SAMA headquarters in Riyadh to the respective company offices and relayed to mobile units alerting the field-officer of the location of the thirsty-for-cash ATM. Refusing to respond to questions about cash restocking or times the source joked: “Not every time you see one of our armored vehicles it is loaded with cash. We do not carry out a standard schedule for ATM cash restocking.” About 10 years ago breaking into an ATM, as the jargon goes, was the talk of the city. But in recent years, uprooting and dismantling ATMs have dwindled to zilch. Saudi banks have kept up with the most recent security measures. Almost all ATMs in the Kingdom are camera-protected. “A good number of ATMs in Jeddah are equipped with fingerprint technology,” said Abdurrahman Aljhaili, a former NCB IT employee. Some banks have introduced eye-print technology, on an experimental basis in certain locations. “It is tricky technology, you would be required to input certain data on a touch-screen and as you do it your eyes get laser-printed and stored somewhere in the bank,” added Aljhaili. A 2009 study by United Saudi Researchers (USR), commissioned by a leading bank about the cash-holding habits of Saudis and non-Saudis yielded conclusions that both groups “with no statistically-significant differences, use ATM cards to rationalize cash on-hand. Saudis and residents use ATM transactions to get cash for frequent, small-value buys from neighborhood stores or mini-markets. Big-ticket items are paid for through POS or placed on credit cards.” At the end of Q1/2011, SAMA revealed the top three Saudi banks with ATMs: Al-Rajhi (2,812), Riyadh Bank (2,592) and the National Commercial Bank (NCB) (1,656). The Saudi Holland Bank picked up the rear (255). __
