OREANDA-NEWS. August 07, 2014. To facilitate foreign-currency cash withdrawal of customers with plans to travel or study abroad, ICBC has recently launched the reservation service for foreign-currency cash withdrawal in nearly 500 outlets across seven provinces and cities, including Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Guangdong, Shandong, Zhejiang, and Jiangsu, which support up to 21 currencies in cash withdrawal. Customers can handle the business through ICBC personal internet banking, mobile banking and 95588 telephone banking. ICBC’s Chongqing Branch, Heilongjiang Branch, Jilin Branch, Dalian Branch, Xinjiang Branch, and Fujian Branch will officially introduce the business in August.

The 21 currencies that can be withdrawn through ICBC’s reservation service at present are USD, EUR, GBP, JPY, HKD, AUD, CAD, SGD, NZD, CHF, SEK, NOK, DKK, RUB, BRL, MYR, MOP, PHP, THB, KRW, and TWD.

According to an official with ICBC, customers with demand of withdrawing cash through the reservation service can log on to the ICBC personal internet banking, enter the online reservation column, click the outlet for reservation, input information including type of foreign currency, amount, outlet name, date, and time interval, and then click “Confirm”. Afterwards, the system will feed back the result of reservation automatically. iPhone users may log on to the ICBC mobile banking terminal, enter the outlet service column, click the outlet for reservation, input information including type of foreign currency, date, outlet name, time interval, and amount, and then click “Confirm”. Afterwards, the system will feed back the result of reservation automatically. Customers using phones with the android system can log on to the ICBC mobile banking terminal, enter the service and setting column, and then click the outlet for reservation. After selecting the outlet, customers can input information including type of foreign currency, date, time interval, and amount, and click the “Confirm”. Then the reservation result will be automatically reverted by the system. Customers can also dial 95588 for manual service, raise the requirement of withdrawing foreign-currency cash via reservation to the customer service representative, and finish the reservation procedures based on the guidance of the customer service representative. After finishing the reservation, customers can, on the agreed date, go to the selected outlet with valid certificates, click the “reservation” button at the queuing machine, get the priority queuing number, and handle the business.

The official also said that with China’s accelerated internationalization, citizens’ demands for foreign-currency cash are rapidly increasing. However, as different customers need different types of foreign currency, if the bank does not learn the actual demands of the customers in advance, it will be difficult to prepare the foreign-currency cash required, which will cause inconvenience and affect service efficiency. To this end, ICBC has leveraged its advantages in internet finance and launched the reservation service for foreign-currency cash withdrawal through the model of Online-to-Offline (O2O), which meets the customized demands to withdraw foreign-currency cash.