19.10.13

SBI to install 7850 ATMs by March

In an attempt to improve ATM connectivity, State Bank of India has awarded CMS Info System the contract to install 7,850 ATMs by March 2014. The move is aimed at providing necessary infrastructure for multiple financial inclusion initiatives, including the Direct Beneficiary Transfer Scheme.
Underlining the urgency to enhance the banking facilities in the country, finance minister P Chidambaram had recently asked public sector banks to increase ATM footprints so that every branch could have at least one ATM. SBI’s Rs 450-crore order to CMS is the largest ATM deployment contract awarded by any bank in the country.

State Bank of India plans to add 26,500 ATMs over the next five months to take the total count to 65,000, a move that will strengthen the ATM network of the country’s biggest lender and its five associate banks.
The SBI group — SBI and the associate banks — already runs India’s largest ATM network with 38,779 machines. A bank executive said SBI will, by March 2014, set up 7,800 ATMs under its own brand, while 17,200 will be brown-label ATMs that will be managed by a third-party vendor.
SBI has given CMS Info Systems, a Mumbai-based IT solutions provider, the contract to instal, manage and service 7,800 ATMs, the executive said. The contract is estimated to be in the range of Rs 250-260 crore. Banking experts said this is one of the biggest deals in the ATM space in the country. Of the 26,500, the bank has installed 6,100 ATMs so far and has an ambitious target of 20,400 ATMs for the remaining six months.
Brown-label ATMs are those for which public sector banks jointly call for competitive bidding to derive benefits of scale and achieve financial inclusion. They are mainly installed in rural and semi-urban areas.
In the Union Budget, finance minister P Chidambaram had asked public sector banks to equip all of their branches with ATMs.
As on March 2012, 33,700 branches of state-run banks did not have ATMs.
ATMs provide customers an alternative channel to withdraw deposits and enable branches to focus on customers requiring other services like loan or demand draft.



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