Greece debt crisis: Can new technology ease cash-flow issues? By Jasmine Coleman

BBC News, Athens Published duration 12 July 2015 Related Topics Greece debt crisis

image copyright Reuters

As talks on Greece's future in the eurozone drag on, the country's financial situation is close to collapse.

Businesses and their customers are struggling to get hold of the money they need.

But some entrepreneurs finding ways of using technology to adapt to the cash-flow crisis.

Here are some of the ideas that have emerged.

Cash machine app

image copyright AFP image caption The app lets people know which ATMs are functioning

Banks have now been closed for two weeks and Greeks are allowed to withdraw a maximum of €60 (£43; $67) in cash a day.

And because of a shortage of smaller denomination notes, they are often limited to €50.

A new app for Android devices has been launched in the past week to help find working cash machines. There are also plans to launch it on Apple devices too.

The app, "Find ATM", lets users leave feedback to tell other people whether there is money in a particular cash machine, what the queue is like, and whether it has sought-after €20 notes.

"Our idea came during the very first days of capital controls," Dimitris Xatzileftheriou, one of the developers, told Greek media

"Technically it wasn't difficult... the most demanding part was finding all of the ATMs in Greece and entering them."

Funding other firms

image copyright ZeroFund image caption Small businesses can ask for help on the ZeroFund website

Credit card payments and bank transfers to accounts outside Greece are in effect blocked.

Some larger companies have reportedly offered to help other firms by suspending payment requests.

Meanwhile, entrepreneurs John Vlachoyiannis and Panos Papadopoulos have been leading a volunteer effort to assist Greek start-ups that have no way of paying necessary operating costs.

Their website, ZeroFund , helps small-scale companies ask for help with the payments they cannot manage due to capital controls, such as charges for web hosting.

And it finds donors to support them.

"What we do is we get all the requests by people, and we just dispatch it to different people who are helping out," says Mr Papadopoulos

Bitcoin 'ATMs'

image copyright Reuters image caption Greece is now home to two bitcoin "ATMs"

Fans of Bitcoin say the virtual currency could be a way for Greeks to keep their money safe and avoid capital controls.

Last month tech entrepreneur Kim Dotcom said a market crash was "likely" if Greece failed to repay its loans and that people should take the opportunity to invest in Bitcoin and gold.

Greek interest has increased in the online "crypto-currency" in recent months, according to reports, although it remains relatively unknown.

media caption Should Greeks turn to Bitcoin?

It allows people both to buy Bitcoins using normal money and convert the virtual currency into cash with much higher withdrawal limits, according to US business magazine Fortune

Bitcoins have no central authority and are created, or mined, when computers complete a complicated mathematical problem.