The Chinese self-service terminal market experienced a high growth decade. Currently, new market opportunities have reappeared for the whole self-service terminal industry and these mainly include self-service terminals for the rural market, community banks, and third parties. For example, the number of cash recycling systems (CRS) grew from 2,600 in 2004 to 49,000 in 2014.

In the area of building branches, leading banks have already completed their expansion from the top-tier cities to provincial capitals, and even to rural towns and villages. By 2014, the electronic banking diversion rate has reached 70%, with all counter transactions that can be diverted to self-service channels. On the other hand, rising manpower and organizational costs resulted in losses in some branches, and many banks had no choice but to close down some of these branches in order to cut costs. In the report Self-Service Strategies in the Chinese Banking Industry, Celent examines the size of the self-service market, trends, market segments and the competitive landscape.

“Among the self-service terminal equipment, CRS, self-service banking kiosks and VTMs saw the fastest growth.” says Hua Zhang, Analyst with Celent’s Asian Financial Services Group and author of the report. “In the area of operations, the outsourcing of ATM operations is a very important trend with a market size of approximately US$3.3 billion. Celent estimates that about 20% of the newly-added ATMs in the future will appear in the form of outsourcing of operations or lease.”

This report provides an overview of self-service market in China, including discussion of self-service trends and vendor strategies.