Congo banking on new ATMs as sign of hope

KINSHASA, Congo — Any new technology takes some getting used to. Just ask Claude Musonda, who had a run-in one recent Saturday night with this French-speaking country's first distributeur automatique des billets, or ATM.

On his way to a nightclub, Musonda, 25, stopped for cash. He inserted his card and followed the instructions, but when the machine spit out his card, he didn't grab it. Fifteen seconds went by, and the ATM, as a security measure, swallowed his plastic and didn't dispense his money.

"I didn't know you had to take out the card right away," said a sheepish Musonda, who had to borrow money from a friend so they could go out that night. "I'm still learning this system."

Until Germany's ProCredit Bank established a branch last year in Kinshasa, the sprawling capital of this war-torn former Belgian colony, most Congolese had never seen an ATM. The very notion of a bank account — and the financial stability it represents — is foreign in a place that for four decades has known nothing but corruption and conflict, and where eight of every 10 people live on less than $1 a day.

The state-owned banking sector has all but collapsed, and banks charge exorbitant fees to the few customers they have. The merchants, sidewalk vendors and businesspeople who make up Congo's small but ambitious middle class have nothing better to do with their money than hide it in their homes.

Commerce here moves at a premodern pace. Everything — food, appliances, even automobiles — is transacted in cash, either U.S. dollars or comically thick wads of blackened, decaying Congolese francs.

Now, as votes are tallied from last week's runoff presidential election — the first democratic election here in 41 years — many Congolese are seeing a chance for renewal in their country. It's a renewal epitomized by nothing so much as Kinshasa's ATM, situated in the busy commercial district of Gombe, on a narrow street lined with kiosks and filled with hawkers peddling everything from matchbooks to pedicures.

By far the best-looking building on the block belongs to ProCredit. With branches in 20 developing countries, the Frankfurt-based bank specializes in micro-loans and savings accounts for individuals, with nominal fees and no minimum deposits. Its investors include the U.S. retirement fund manager TIAA-CREF, which bought a 10 percent stake in the bank in September.

In one year in Kinshasa, ProCredit has signed up 14,000 clients — twice as many as any other bank in Congo, said the head of the bank, Oliver Meisenberg. About 6,000 of them have signed up for ATM cards, which require a $23.60 annual fee.

For $35 more annually, the bank also offers Visa cards, which have become a status symbol among Kinshasa's young and beautiful. But they also offer Congolese traders much-needed access to their money abroad, instead of having to travel with stacks of bills.