7-Eleven and BankWest are pleased to announce the completion of the roll-out of state-of-the-art BankWest ATMs in 359 7-Eleven stores across the Eastern seaboard. The 7-Eleven and BankWest partnership enhances Australia's retail and banking offering to convenience store customers and demonstrates the two companies' commitment to innovatively meet the needs of today's busy consumer.
The ATM roll-out strengthens 7-Eleven's position as Australia's leading convenience retailer and significantly builds on BankWest's national growth strategy.
Research conducted by BankWest indicates that consumers are choosing to do their banking at times most convenient to them, often outside traditional banking hours. ATM usage is at its highest between 5pm-7pm and 12noon - 1pm, with 50.9 per cent of all transactions taking place between Wednesday and Friday.
According to 7-Eleven's Chief Executive Office, Warren Willmot, the research reinforces why the partnership is so successful for both companies.
"For almost 30 years 7-Eleven has provided Australian consumers with immediate and reliable convenience shopping. The introduction of BankWest branded ATMs across our network of stores in New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria enables us to broaden our service offering of meeting the everyday retail needs of customers, by providing a safe and secure environment for customers to also access their banking needs, 24 hours a day," said Mr Wilmot.
Consumers will have access to advanced ATM technology with features including touch screens, barcode scanners and built-in security cameras.
According to BankWest's CEO of Retail Banking, Chris Whitehead, the partnership significantly advances the national rollout of the BankWest brand.
"The partnership provides our east coast customers with their 'channel-of-choice' for card based transactional services and allows them to choose how they bank with us - at a time, place and location that is convenient to them. They are able to use one of our traditional branches, the internet or now, our branded ATMs inside 7-Eleven.
"This gets the BankWest brand in front of more than half a million non-BankWest customers every month. This exposure significantly builds on our core objective of becoming a national force in Australia's financial services industry in an innovative, customer-centric way.
"Our origins are in Western Australia where we have an extensive branch network but on the east coast, in the absence of strong bricks and mortar presence, we are looking at innovative and different ways to grow our physical presence. With our research indicating that convenience is a deciding factor in where and how people bank, the 7-Eleven partnership delivers an ideal vehicle for us to meet the needs of today's consumer," said Mr Whitehead.
The new BankWest branded ATMs are more secure than traditional ones because they have high-security, bank specification devices with full-time live monitoring. They provide a new benchmark for what consumers can expect from future banking and retail services. The 7-Eleven outlets also provide security cameras in-store.
