Motivated to supply 2000 ATMs and 4000 PoSs in Ethiopia, the Commercial Bank of Ethiopia (CBE) has shortlisted two companies, M2M, a Moroccan company and the other an Ethiopian company SS Communication (SSC).
IT companies had earlier responded to Bank’s initial tender for the supply of the ATMs and eight for the PoS machines. The companies that are now competing.
The Commercial Bank of Ethiopia is the largest commercial bank in Ethiopia As of June 2011, it had about 86.5 billion Birr in assets and held approximately 63.5% of deposits and about 38% of all bank loans in the country.
According to Fortune, the financial opening for companies which passed the technical evaluation, with SSC and CBM offering the lowest prices for the PoS and ATMs, respectively. M2M on its part will have a better score in the technical evaluation for both machines, Fortune added.
SSC is a local partner to the Swiss company, BPC Banking Technologies. It is these two firms that are working together to implement National Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) for all 16 banks in Ethiopia.
While M2M Group on its part is a Moroccan IT firm that has in 2012 supplied 420 ATM units and 4,000 PoS machines to CBE.
The two companies proposed to supply 4,000 VeriFone PoS machines, for which SSC offered 39 Million Birr and M2M 40 Million Birr.