ATM-maker NCR India is quite hopeful that “majority” of ATMs deployed under its name by banks will get “recalibrated” in the next four-to-six weeks, a top official said.

Recalibration of the nearly one lakh NCR-run ATMs — out of the total 2.2 lakh ATMs in the country — would lead to such machines dispensing ₹2,000 currency notes, which are new and smaller in size than the demonetised ₹500 and ₹1,000 notes.

“Recalibration will not be a tedious exercise or a lengthy process. But there is a need for at least one service engineer from our end and one from the custodian’s to be present. It’s a engineering change and cannot be done by any cash-in-transit agency or the custodian alone,” Ashok Shankar, Head of Solutions Marketing & Deployment, NCR India, told BusinessLine . Already, some banks have done pilots and some ATMs have started dispensing ₹2,000 notes, he said.

Ever since the government announced de-monetisation on November 8, the common man has been put to serious inconvenience. “The main reason it is taking time (for recalibration) is that our engineers have to go out physically and do the recalibration on each and every ATM. The currency note has been changed and hence the need for recalibration,” Shankar said.

Currently, NCR India has nearly 1,000 engineers under its fold and its ATM coverage spanned 4,000 locations across the country. India today has 130 ATMs per million people. This is expected to increase to 200-220 ATMs per million by 2020, according to engineering consultancy services firm Dastur. In the US, there are 1,500 ATMs per million people, and in China the figure is 350 ATMs per million.

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