Cash machine customers get added thrill of a flutter

[emad]

Cash machine customers get added thrill of a flutter
From Leo Lewis in Tokyo



A JAPANESE bank is offering automatic tellers with a built-in slot machine to jazz up the “boring” experience of withdrawing money from a hole in the wall.

From next month, customers at the 135 branches of the Ogaki Kyoritsu Bank of Gifu, a wealthy rural prefecture west of Tokyo, will be able to while away the minutes spent at the cash machine praying that the wheels come up lucky sevens.

Gambling is generally illegal in Japan, and the stakes in this unique mixture of serious financial transaction and gambling fever are certainly not vast.

In contrast with most other big economies, the Japanese banking system has been exceptionally slow to introduce 24-hour ATMs, and still imposes banking charges on anyone using the machines after office hours. Any withdrawal after 8pm, for example, incurs a fee of about 50p, and the fees are much higher at weekends.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-1701823,00.html

[Hugin]

1. Is it a choice of not getting any money or getting more money?

We have the first kind here in the U.S.