India’s State Run Banks To Set Up 60,000 ATMs

After a lull in ATM expansion in India, public-sector banks now are planning a concentrated and collaborative push to deploy nearly 60,000 machines across the country over the next two years.

This comes after the Ministry of Finance established a centralized outsourcing model earlier this month for government-owned banks, a ministry spokesperson tells PaymentsSource.

“The 60,000 ATMs will come up before the middle of 2014,” he says, noting a government-appointed committee of ministers, bankers and industry stakeholders established the plan.

Under the new model, ATM vendors and other financial-services providers will participate in the bidding process for six major state-run banks–State Bank of India Ltd., Punjab National Bank Ltd., Union Bank of India Ltd., Bank of India Ltd., Bank of Baroda Ltd. and Canara Bank Ltd.

 The committee has specified the technical requirements on bids from ATM vendors for 22 regions across India, each split into 16 bidding circles, he explains. Each circle would see a fixed number of ATMs set up for each of the six banks. The committee will invite ATM vendors to bid for circles by June, and contracts will be awarded by yearend.

The number of machines using the National Financial Switch that connects all ATMs in India reached 98,025 as of April 30, according to data from National Payments Corp. of India.

India’s central bank also agreed to banks’ demands to allow companies to set up third-party networks to increase ATM deployments (see story)And in February it issued draft guidelines for so-called white-label ATMs that note the technical requirements and how stakeholders would share revenue (see story). 

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