A LEADING bank has signed a deal with the post office to ensure rural areas and remote villages have access to cashpoints and similar services – the BBVA is now offering commission-free withdrawals and home cash deliveries.
Correos, the State mail service, has been setting up several hundred cashpoints across the country in villages with no bank branches or banking facilities, meaning residents do not have to drive to their nearest town to get to their money.
Known as Correos Cash, the system allows customers of participating banks to withdraw money at the post office.
Even very remote parts of the countryside are likely to have a post office within relatively convenient distance, given that mail deliveries are a standard service to any national address – in fact, Correos has 2,389 branches with a cashpoint.
Around 6,000 postmen and postwomen work in rural Spain, and part of their round involves taking cash withdrawn from banks direct to residents' doors.
The BBVA recognises that residents in what is often referred to as 'empty Spain' – rural parts at high risk of population decline due to lack of infrastructure or job opportunities for working-aged adults with children – tend to be pensioners, and often very elderly.
This means they are less likely to be able to drive to built-up areas, and public transport in very rural areas is not frequent enough to act as a feasible car substitute.
Also, elderly persons may not be able to leave their homes at all, and are far less likely to be able to make use of online banking, or be confident with using debit cards.
But even residents without home internet can conduct a high number of transactions via a cashpoint if they are shown how to use them – paying bills by scanning the barcode or typing in the reference numbers, checking their balance, moving money between accounts, making transfers to other account holders, applying for duplicate debit or credit cards or for loans, and setting up new accounts, including savings.
At the time, Correos was seeking bids from high-street banks to run the services.
Not all the cashpoints were due to open in the heart of the countryside – around 300 were tipped for villages of between 500 and 3,000 inhabitants, which might not be in isolated locations.
These small municipalities may be just a few kilometres from a large town, but residents without access to a car may be unable to reach them and need banking facilities within walking distance.
The Correos Cash stations have all been opened in areas with no bank branches at all.
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