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State Bank of India, the country’s largest lender, will leapfrog rivals by ramping up its point-of-sale (POS) terminal network by 1.20 lakh each year over the next two years, said a top official.
Banks install POS terminals at merchant outlets to facilitate acceptance of payments from customers by swiping their debit/credit/pre-paid cards on the terminals.
Towards April-end, ICICI Bank had the largest network of POS terminals (2,90,898), followed by Axis Bank (2,47,392), HDFC Bank (2,12,748) and SBI (1,40,628).
Overall, banks collectively had a network of 10.76 lakh POS terminals. According to Sushil Kumar Mishra, Deputy Managing Director, SBI, by adding 1.20 lakh POS terminals every year over the next couple of years, the bank will be catapulted to the numero uno position among all banks.
Already, SBI has the largest network of ATMs (44,062 of April-end) in the country. With the ATM network of SBI’s five Associate Banks put together, the State Bank Group has 51,753 ATMs.
Though SBI is the largest player among public sector banks when it comes to ATMs, it wants to go a step ahead and become the largest in POS terminals. By expanding the POS terminal network, the bank is eyeing more fee-based income. As of April-end 2014, SBI had a debit card base of 12.39 crore. The State Bank Group (including the five Associate Banks of SBI) had a debit card base of 15.68 crore.
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