Harimau Capital

Despite the growth of alternative payment instruments such as credit and debit cards, digital wallets and electronic funds transfers conducted via internet banking and smartphones, cash is still the preferred medium for transactions in many parts of the world. Globally, 90 percent of transactions are cash-based, and the number of currency notes in circulation worldwide grows by 3 percent each year. The cost of handling cash tops USD300 billion annually and is predicted to increase from 2-10 percent annually.

For financial institutions, the cost of cash represents the largest single segment of operating expenses for automated teller machines (ATM). Single-function ATMs are fast becoming obsolete and can no longer meet the need for banks facing the high costs and workload of handling cash.

In recent years, the technology trend is to combine the functions of ATM and cash deposit machines (CDM) into cash recycling self-service kiosks called cash recycling machines (CRM). CRMs can accept cash from depositors and re-dispense them to withdrawers so that the cash is essentially “recycled” – resulting in a lower cost of ownership for the banks in the area of unused cash float, cash maintenance, cash handling, space rental and hardware and software costs. Besides significant savings in operational cost, CRMs also provide better service levels to the banks’ customers because they have higher uptime rates.

According to statistics compiled by an ATM manufacturer based in Guangzhou China, the use of CRMs can decrease the daily cost for ATM operation by 18-25 percent. CRMs can help a financial institution to save as much as USD948,000 per year per 100 machine population. In another study, a major bank based in Frankfurt Germany is saving around EUR2.0 million annually by switching to cash recycling technology. With CRMs, instead of eight times a month, cash-intransit companies or bank employees only need to visit each location twice a month – representing a workload savings of 75 percent. In some locations, where there is a high degree of activity between money deposited and money withdrawn, that visit interval can decrease to once every 5 weeks or more.


In line with this cash recycling trend worldwide, OpenSys partnered with OKI Electric Japan – the original inventor of cash recycling technology thirty years’ ago and one of the leading suppliers of CRMs in Japan, China, India, Indonesia, Russia, South Korea and Taiwan – to supply and provide maintenance services of CRMs to banks in Malaysia in 2013.  

After many months of proof of concept and customer trials, two major banks in Malaysia placed orders for several hundred units of CRMs with OpenSys/OKI in March 2014. We believe that these two significant orders will be the catalyst for a bright future ahead for OpenSys in the ATM market in Malaysia.


Currently, the total number of ATMs and CDMs in Malaysia is approximately 15,000 units with an annual growth rate of about 5 percent. Most of these ATMs and CDMs will be replaced with CRMs eventually.

In addition to our CRM success, OpenSys continues to lead the market in the domain of non-cash-dispensing self-service kiosks called Efficient Service Machines (ESM). ESMs allow customers to make deposits of cheques, pay bills, top-up prepaid cards and renew insurance premiums using cash, cheques, credit and debit cards. OpenSys is also the market leader in providing solutions in image-based cheque processing systems that minimizes the physical movement of paper cheques by converting cheques into electronic funds transfer instruments that can be transmitted via the Internet.

Our major customers are banks, insurance, telecommunication and utility companies.

- Opensys (M) 2014 Annual Report