United bank for Africa Plc (UBA), one of Africa’s leading financial institutions, and Computer Warehouse Group Plc (CWG), the leading Pan African Systems Integration Company, have signed an agreement for the deployment of over 450 units of the award winning CINEO series of Wincor Nixdorf brand of Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) in Nigeria.
The CINEO series, though mono-functional automated teller machines for indoor and outdoor installations, can be upgraded to cash recycling systems. These ATMs are improved versions of the earlier ProCash series.
They shall be deployed and supported by CWG’s certified engineers who have undergone rigorous training at the Wincor Nixdorf operations centre in Paderborn, Germany.
In the recent past, Mr Eckard Heidloff, global chief executive officer of Wincor Nixdorf; made his premier visit to Africa where he toured CWG’s operational base in Lagos and also visited key customers of Wincor Nixdorf, including United Bank for Africa in the company of Mr Austin Okere, founder and chief executive officer of the Computer Warehouse Group.
His visit created the opportunity for a joint strategy that will improve cash services in Nigeria while supporting the CBN’s cashless economy initiative.
UBA took advantage of the advanced features and solid engineering of the Wincor CINEO ATMs to increase their competitive edge in the rapidly growing ATM market.
UBA with a vision to be the undisputed leading and dominant financial services institution in Africa, and with an excellent understanding of the importance and the role of Information Technology (IT) in actualizing their vision, has selected CWG as a key Technology Partner, providing her with key Applications such as the Finacle Core Banking Application, Oracle Relational Database Management System, as well as virtualizing her Server and Storage environment, and the deployment of her ATM strategy among others.
It will be recalled that one of the highlights of the 4th Nigerian-German Economic forum in 2011 which was graced by both President Goodluck Jonathan and Chancellor Angela Merkel at Abuja, CWG and Wincor Nixdorf signed a cooperative agreement to deploy 600 Wincor Nixdorf ATMs to major banks and financial institutions in Nigeria. Major beneficiaries were UBA, FBN and GTB amongst others.
The British Retail Banking Research Group, relying on statistics from the Central bank of Nigeria, estimates that there are about 11,000 ATMs in Nigeria today, with about 50% being of the Wincor Nixdorf brand. CWG, having deployed and supporting about a third of the aggregate ATMs, or 3500 Wincor Nixdorf ATMs has established her credentials as the de facto leading ATM Company in Nigeria.