Wednesday, 21 March 2012

Are Coles getting into the banking business?

I was in Rundle Street in Adelaide this afternoon and made a quick stop at the ATM to grab some cash.  There's a NAB ATM in Rundle Street on the side of the Target building. After going through the motions, I was waiting for the machine to dispense my cash when I noted the message below appear on the screen.


Apparently, Coles are now in the ATM business.  I did a bit of research tonight and found that until recently NAB held the contract to supply ATM's at all Coles Express stores Australia wide. This contract recently expired and was put out to tender -  NAB was the runner up.  This has now been awarded to a company called Customers Limited.  All existing NAB ATMs will be removed from Coles locations and replaced with Coles branded ATMs.

Customers Limited will provide the ATMs to Coles under a managed service agreement. This means Coles will set and retain all the fees levied on those making withdrawals and checking balances at the ATMs.  I don't know what the levels of ATM usage are at Coles Express stores, but they are obviously sufficiently high to be lucrative enough for Coles to go down this track.  Seeing as the Rundle Street ATM is not in a Coles Express store I can only assume that the building itself is opened by Wesfarmers (who own Coles).

Coles have already expanded their product offering from the traditional Coles supermarkets, to Coles Express stores, Coles Liquor, Coles petrol stations, Coles insurance and Coles Mastercard.  They even have their own music download site Coles Music!  Is the Coles ATM just the first step towards Coles Banking?

Do the supermarkets now have too much power?  Does the Coles/Woolworths duopoly bother you?

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