ATMs to be tuned for more cash flow

With private sector banks like HDFC Bank increasing the withdrawal limit for their premium clients, the currency storage capacity of automated teller machines (ATMs) would need to be increased besides hiking the number of higher- denomination notes stored in these machines.

According to independent banking sector analyst Ramesh Bhojwani, a similar facility is offered by most foreign banks for its premium customers.

"These customers are basically account holders with deposits anywhere in the range of Rs 3 crore and above. For such preferred customers the banks have special titanium and gold cards through which they can withdraw and transact with very high upper limits," he said.

Such initiatives would naturally mean banks having to stack more currency notes of higher denomination in the ATMs.

"They would have to increase the capacity by adding more Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes or add more machines as the transactions would have an impact on the money supply in the ATMs," he added.

An HDFC Bank spokesperson said debit cards usage at ATMs and POS (point of sales) has been rapidly increasing over the past couple of years. "Many of our customers wanted higher limits, too. We believe it as a convenience that customers will find useful," he said.

He added that to cater to the increase in demand, the bank will be using a mix of more cassettes and more machines per room or get the machines to dispense a larger number of Rs 1,000 notes.

Earlier, banks used to deploy the two cassette ATMs, which had a storage capacity of around Rs 12 lakh. The four cassette ATMs now being used by banks have a storage capacity of around Rs 25 lakh.

Going forward, if the denomination of the currency notes is increased to add more of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes, the capacity could go up to Rs 40 lakh.

While HDFC Bank has increased the withdrawal and shopping limits of its HDFC Bank Imperia Gold Cards to Rs 1 lakh and Rs 1.25 lakh, respectively, from the earlier limit of Rs 50,000 a day, ICICI Bank has set the withdrawal and transaction limits at Rs 1 lakh and Rs 1.5 lakh, respectively, on its Titanium, Platinum and Signature assortment of debit cards per day. Other private sector banks have a limit of Rs 50,000 a day.

Jaivinder Singh Gill, managing director of NCR India, a leading ATM manufacturer and service provider, said that a typical ATM with four cassette holders can store anywhere between 5,000 to 10,000 notes with the number of transactions per day varying from 200 to 600.

Recently, NCR launched the NCR SelfServ 32, India's first 'No Envelope' Multi Function Intelligent Deposit ATM, which has a storage capacity of around 10,000 notes besides being able to recycle the notes deposited by the customers, Gill added.

"The new ATMs offer a diverse range of intelligent 'no envelope' cash deposit and recycling options, including deposit and validation of up to 200 notes per transaction and up to four dispense/recycle cassettes with a total capacity of over 10,000 notes with a single dispenser," he said.

Source:http://in.news.yahoo.com