BOT backs banking agents for public interests

BANGKOK, February 23 (TNA) - The Bank of Thailand (BOT) has expressed its support for the setting up of more banking agents by commercial banks as they will widely increase public access to banking services. While telling journalists of the policy, BOT Governor Veerathai Santiprabhob noted that expanding banking agents will provide consumers in many more areas with easy access to banking services, similar to existing electronic banking (e-banking) services namely the PrompPay, mobile banking and QR Cord systems. "Banking agents can provide different services, as assigned by commercial banks. For instance, some of them are authorized for payments of bills and some other for deposit and withdrawal services, depending on strategies of commercial banks that appoint the banking agents", Veerathai explained. The BOT governor acknowledged that banking agents not only provide the general public of all groups in many more areas with increased and easy access to banking services, but also help reduce operational costs of commercial banks. The BOT governor also expressed his support for the Thai Bankers Association's plan on launching in the near future the so-called "white-label" Automated Teller Machine (ATM) system, in which the general public can access to about 70,000 ATM booths nationwide identically no matter what commercial banks their ATM cards are issued, pointing out that the plan will integrate resources of different commercial banks, as well as reduce their business costs and redundancy. Like a number of other central banks worldwide, the BOT governor stressed on the Thai central bank's policy on asking all financial institutes not to provide all forms of the transaction service of cryptocurrency to their clients in order to protect them from high risks of the digital asset, even after there will be new regulations on trading and investment of digital money in the country in the coming months. (TNA)