NCR Corp accounts for 49 percent of all the ATMs in India. With the Union government’s move to demonetise old Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes, the ATM maker is working to get the systems fixed in the shortest time.
In an interview to Shruti Suresh, the MD of NCR Corp, India, Navroze Dastur speaks about the process and the plans:
Q What are the biggest challenges that you’re facing being the largest producer of ATMs in the Indian market?
The entire ecosystem is actively playing its role - banks, CIT (Cash-in-Transit) agencies and ATM service providers. Roughly there are around 2 lakh ATMs that only dispense cash. The first job is to remove machines with the old cash. Next is loading Rs 100 notes, Rs 500 and Rs 2,000 notes.
Q Please elaborate on the need of newer cassettes for new sets of notes from ATMs like Rs 20 and Rs 50.
Newer cassettes will have to be manufactured for the new notes.
At the same time, back-end changes at the switch are also required if banks want to add any new notes - like '50. There will be physical visits to carry out cassette configuration changes.
Q More notes — 500, 1,000, 2,000, 50 and 20 — are to be dispensed — please throw some light on the working of the same.
The machines with new notes will work similar to the old notes. The only change being, since the sizes of the new notes are smaller than the old ones, the cassettes will have to be configured a bit — which takes about 30 minutes and minor software changes to add new denominations.
Q How do you think the Indian ATM market is coping with the global market?
India has the third largest number of installed ATMs, behind China and the USA. The number of ATMs reached 2,14,500 by the end of 2015, and growth has been strong over the last five years, despite a slight slowdown in 2015. In three of the last five years, annual growth of the installed base has exceeded 25%.
Increasing economic development, the rise in the personal disposable income levels (especially in the urban areas) and the evolution of class banking to mass banking has driven the industry growth during the past decade.
Banks in India are progressively outsourcing ATM deployment and management to third-party vendors, which is ultimately aiding the banks to emphasise more on their core banking activities.
In India, it is expected that 2.75 lakh ATMs will be deployed by the end of 2016. The Indian ATM market is expected to reach around 4,07,000 machines by 2021.
The main drivers of Indian ATM industry growth are initiatives to further financial inclusion such as Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) program, Pradhan Mantri Jan-Dhan Yojana (PMJDY).
Q What are the changes in the other country markets that need to be incorporated in India?
India has about 120 ATMs per million, against 350 ATMs per million in China. More ATMs will have to be introduced to ensure last mile connectivity of financial services to people in all corners of India.
Q NCR introduced cloud-based ATM, Kalpana, in Chennai on a pilot basis. When will it be functional and accessible to the public?
We will see the rollout of these machines in 2017.
