In another move to engage its customers, India Post, the national postal service of India, plans to deploy special-function ATMs throughout India, a spokesperson for service tells PaymentsSource.
During this fiscal year, which ends in March, the postal service will install 1,000 ATMs at various post offices across the country, the spokesperson says.
“The first two such post offices to get ATMs will be those in Panaji and Margao in the southern state of Goa,” he adds, noting those machines should deployed in those towns by August.”
The postal service is working with the Centre for Information Systems to secure the machines and not with any specific ATM vendor because its customers will not be withdrawing cash using regular debit cards, such as those branded by Visa Inc. or MasterCard Worldwide, the spokesperson says. “These ATMs will work with magnetic stripe cards that will be provided to our accountholders to withdraw cash from their savings accounts with the banks."
India Post, unlike postal services in other countries, is a major financial-services provider, especially in rural areas, where it offers insurance, fund transfers, and pension payments.
India Post claims to hold nearly 230 million savings accounts, serviced by nearly 155,000 branches across the country.
The plans for the ATM deployments have been in the works for some time (
Earlier this year, the agency also began enabling customers to conduct and pay for postal services online using their Visa- and MasterCard-branded debit and credit cards (
