The month of April brought good news for Ciego de Ávila`s citizens. They will be able to extract cash from their bank accounts associated with a magnetic card, without having to go to an ATM or a bank branch, thanks to the Extra Cash service. An option that is available at 56 warehouses in the province and which can be used, for the time, by users of the EnZona payment platform.

According to Vlamir Rodríguez Fernández, head of the Electronic Banking department of the Credit and Commerce Bank (Bandec) in Ciego de Ávila, this service allows clients to withdraw up to 1,000.00 Cuban pesos per day, when there is availability of money in box. An operation that, in the coming weeks, may also be carried out through the Transfermóvil application, since Commerce must still make the contract with the Cuban Telecommunications Company (ETECSA) for the use of said platform.

He also explained that when defining the establishments where the new option would be offered, mainly in the main city, those that concentrate a large number of family nuclei and are located far from the areas where the ATMs are located. Devices still insufficient in the face of the increasing number of people who operate with magnetic cards and need cash to pay for products and services, given the poor opportunities to do so through electronic gateways.

Invasor gave an account of this depressed panorama in August of last year, when the COVID-19 pandemic attacked Ciego de Ávila`s population with all its might and long lines were a common scenario at the 12 ATMs in the capital city, an image that is not far of these days. 

However, not all of it is good news, as the specialist says that, in the controls carried out to date, only six operations have been recorded. A figure that is far from expectations and says a lot about the timely information given to users in the units and even the ignorance of a population that, although it has taken its steps, still has misgivings about the use of electronic payment gateways and does not always have the necessary means to access them.

This is confirmed by Fernando Ulloa García, administrator of La Avileña warehouse, in the provincial capital, where they are still waiting for someone interested in the new opportunity, about which those who usually make use of electronic payment there are already aware - who are not many either, he clarifies.

Nevertheless, Ulloa García acknowledges that, by enabling this alternative, the administrators of the involved businesses are favored because, with the increase in the price of various products, the amount of money that is handled is now greater. In addition, when a person requests cash, that balance goes to the entity's bank account, the physical amount to be deposited in the daily delivery being much less.

At the moment, this benefit can only be enjoyed in selected warehouses, but the head of Bandec's Electronic Banking department prefers to be optimistic when he says that the intention is to extend it to units of the Cuban Post Office and ETECSA, and even, venture into the non-state sector with those establishments that have good income.

Since it began, in the middle of last year, experimentally, in Havana, the Extra Cash service has spread to other provinces and continues to broaden the path of computerization that Cuban society undertook a few years ago and now covers various sectors.