A new mobile application for business account holders and a system for easy domestic money transfers in Costa Rica are the latest offerings by Banco Nacional.

BN Movil Empresarial is a mobile application for smartphones powered by the Android operating system, as well as Apple iPhone and iPad devices. This new service is an electronic platform especially designed for business account holders who wish to check on balances, transfer money, check their investments, pay expenses, and others.

Even feature phones (also known as “dumb phones”) can be used to access this service as long as they have a mobile Web browser that can visit www.bnmovil.fi.cr

The new mobile banking platform integrates both business and personal accounts, and they can share the same password. To find out more, please access your Banco Nacional online banking service.

Reaching Out to the Unbanked in Costa Rica

Banco Nacional offers a new service that allows account holders to transfer money to any automated teller machine (ATM) in Costa Rica. This new service can be accessed through Internet Banking, which is Banco Nacional’s secure online banking platform for personal accounts.

These new transfers do not require the recipient to be affiliated with Banco Nacional or any other financial institution for that matter. The transfers must be initiated from an account that holds colones, Costa Rica’s national currency. Accounts in U.S. dollars or euros are excluded.

The minimum amount that can be transferred is 2,000 colones (about $4) and the maximum is 350,000 colones (about $700).  It is important to remember that Banco Nacional ATMs do not dispense 1,000 colones notes, thus transfers must be made in amounts that can be counted out in denominations of 2,000, 5,000, 10,000, 20,000, and 50,000. For example, a transfer in the amount of 3,000 colones will not work –it must be rounded up to 4,000 or 2,000.

The cost of each transfer is $1, and it is valid for five calendar days. The maximum number of card-less ATM transfers that can be made in a single month is 14. To finalize the transfer, the recipient must go to a Banco Nacional ATM between the hours of 5:00 a.m. and 10:00 p.m. The recipient must know the verification number generated by the system plus a numerical string sequence assigned by the account holder, which serves as a PIN.

Domestic card-less ATM transfers can be reversed, but the $1 fee is not returned. The same goes for expired transfers. This service is part of a wide effort to reach the unbanked population of Costa Rica, who make up about half of all adults. Other initiatives to provide financial services to the unbanked include the forthcoming electronic wallet system and prepaid debit cards by Western Union. The unbanked clients, however, must are not exempt from long lines at the ATMs in Costa Rica.