Winners of the 2022 Awards
Best CashTech Award Winners: DBS Bank and Koenig & Bauer Banknote Solutions
Singapore-based DBS Bank deployed pop-up ATMs to distribute new banknotes to discourage customers from overcrowding bank branches during the pandemic. New notes are famous during the Lunar New Year celebrations amongst the Chinese – who form a 70% majority of Singapore’s population. The banknotes, which symbolise ‘new wealth’ and prosperity, are placed into red packets and given to families and friends.
DBS is also the first bank in Singapore to integrate coin and cash deposits in a single transaction, allowing customers to complete their tasks at a quicker pace. The lack of facilities to deposit coins presents a significant barrier to an efficient cash cycle. The DBS solution is its ‘Bank-in-a-Box’ terminal, which features an ATM with a coin sidecar and can handle mass market and corporate deposit coin volumes and integrate them into a single deposit channel.
Koenig & Bauer Banknote Solutions is a manufacturer of specialised high-security printing machines. It has developed ValiCash™, the first application to authenticate banknotes via mobile phone, bridging the physical and digital worlds. The application shows banknotes based on a structural analysis of the Intaglio print and, more generally, on specific optical characteristics of high-security printing processes, including OVMI (Optical Variable Magnetic Inks) elements and holograms. The significance of ValiCash in terms of CashTech is that it enables banknotes that are being recirculated via retailers or other non-bank operations to be authenticated without going through an ATM recycling or banknote processor device as typically installed in bank branches or cash centres.
Best CashTech Innovator: Sonect
The Best CashTech Innovator was presented to Sonect. The Swiss-based company was launched in 2016 and has developed a virtual ATM network connecting consumers who want to withdraw cash with merchants who wish to deposit cash. The app-based solution creates value for all parties in the cash cycle: consumers benefit from convenient and secure access to money; retailers see their cost of handling cash reduced and their foot-traffic increased; banks reduce their operational costs. Sonect has a network of 2,300 locations in Switzerland and is available at all major Swiss banks. It is now extending its operations to the UK and Italy and received its first licence to operate in Mexico last month.
Best CashTech Start-Up: Clip Money
Clip Money won the Best CashTech Start-Up Award. The North American company has combined a mobile app with a cloud-based transaction platform, securely connected cash deposit devices and management software to deliver an end-to-end deposit solution to businesses, whoever they bank with, with the universal deposit devices available in convenient locations 24/7 such as shopping malls. As the footprint of bank branches reduces, this service is helpful both to businesses in making available deposit facilities in a convenient locations such as shopping malls and banks in helping them to reduce costs, manual processes and in-person transaction processing.
For more information – The First CashTech Innovation Awards
