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.

But for the fortunate customers of Ogaki, those late night transactions could be free if lady luck is on their side. If the right symbols appear on the screen, the fee is waived.

Customers who get the words “Super Gold” three times in a line will win about £5, but can only collect the winnings from inside the bank during working hours.

“Usually, withdrawing cash from an ATM is a very tedious chore,” a bank spokesman said. “We wanted to add a little excitement to this experience, and we thought introducing a slot machine-type game, which everyone knows how to play, would be a good idea.”

Judging its customers to be financially astute, the bank will inform cash-machine users what odds are on offer. The chances of having a transaction fee waived are about 1 in 10, and the odds of hitting the 1,000 yen jackpot are 1 in 500.

The bank claims that the odds are good, meaning that it expects many customers to be coming into branches to collect their winnings. This, admits Ogaki’s managers, is all part of the plan.

Having introduced cash machines so late and reluctantly, banks are now worried that their convenience will mean that customers never bother queuing to deal with a human teller again — a point of contact that has always been central to the banks’ ability to push new products and services to their customers.

“Of course, we also wanted to promote our Gold and Super Gold Accounts too. Getting people who usually only use our ATMs to come into our offices gives us a chance to talk to them about upgrading their accounts,” an Ogaki source said.

The slot machine wheeze is part of a growing sense of panic among Japan’s 80 regional banks, which dread losing customers to the “big three” city banking houses. Schemes introduced by rivals include accounts for dogs and massages and aromatherapy.

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