India needs at least 3 lakh ATMs: NPCI chief

With banks opening millions of accounts and issuing the home-grown ‘RuPay’ debit cards under the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana, the ATM network in the country could see a ramp-up from the current 1.82 lakh to three lakh in the next one-and-a-half years.

Reason: debit card acceptance infrastructure needs to be created so that they can be used for transactions such as withdrawal of money and remittance.

Predicting a jump in ATMs, Abhaya Prasad Hota, MD and CEO, National Payments Corporation of India, said it is important that the card acceptance infrastructure, especially ATMs, is built up.

“How do we build the (card) acceptance infrastructure? That is where the big challenge is…With so many cards being issued, where will they be used unless ATMs are installed? Once the ATM infrastructure is in place, the card usage will increase,” said Hota.

The NPCI chief observed that for such a vast country as India, the current 1.82 lakh ATMs is still a small number. The country needs to have a minimum of three lakh ATMs.

According to latest World Bank data, in terms of the ratio of number of ATMs per lakh adults, India, at 11.21 ATMs, is way below Brazil (118.60) and South Africa (59.93).

“Ideally, per lakh adults, there should be about 20 ATMs. We have got about 11. So, we have a long way to go,” said Hota. As on December 19, banks collectively opened 9.66 crore basic savings bank deposit accounts under Jan Dhan Yojana, which is the Centre’s financial inclusion drive for vulnerable groups such as weaker sections and low-income groups.

Kicked-off in August-end, the Yojana seeks to ensure access to financial services, namely, banking/savings and deposit accounts, remittances, credit, insurance and pension in an affordable manner.

Banks collectively have issued 6.92 crore RuPay debit cards to new account holders. RuPay is the home-grown card payment scheme launched by NPCI, the umbrella institution for all retail payment systems in the country, to rival global payments processing giants Visa and MasterCard.

The NPCI chief said the increase in the number of RuPay debit cards will encourage the seven white label ATM service providers (non-bank entities which set up, own and operate ATMs) to ramp up their ATM network.

“They (white label ATM service providers) are not making good money.

“But now with so many cards coming, possibly their business sentiment would be revived and they would start installing ATMs,” he said.

Since ATMs cannot be installed in every village, the services of business correspondents (BCs) are being engaged by banks to reach out banking services to the hinterland.

These BCs have biometric hand-held devices that are integrated with the bank’s core banking solution platform to enable seamless banking transactions such a withdrawal/ deposit of money, remittance, etc.

According to Hota, the new RuPay debit cards which are being issued under the Jan Dhan scheme are PIN-enabled, and wherever Aadhaar number is available, they are also biometric-enabled.

So, in rural areas the new hand-held devices which have been introduced can accept Aadhaar as well as PIN authentication.

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