India: Post Office to have largest ATM network

NCR Corporation India, the automatic teller machine (ATM) manufacturer, is eyeing post office savings accounts as its growth area in the coming days.

Apart from commercial banks’ expanding ATM network, the company has identified the Indian Post, which has small savings account almost equal to all the banks taken together, as its next growth area.

“Worldwide, we are working with post offices. In India also we see them as high potential growth area,” the company’s Vice President (Global Operations), Rick Marquardt, told reporters here. In order to meet the increasing demand the company foresees in the domestic market, it has expanded its existing capacity from approximately 250-300 machines per day to 800-900 machines.

The new plant, set up adjacent to its existing plant in Puducherry, was inaugurated recently by Rick Marquardt.

C. Sivaramane, General Manager in India, said that the plant would also manufacture components that would be exported to the company’s manufacturing facilities in Hungary and China. Till date, NCR has invested USD 3.7 million (approximately Rs 15 crore) in India.

“We started manufacturing ATMs in India five years ago and till date have supplied to all the major banks in the country. The largest public sector bank, State Bank of India, has taken around 3,000 machines from us, followed by Canara Bank (1,000 machines),” Sivaramane said, adding that NCR was working on technologies through which ATMs could be used for mobile top-ups and ticketing.

In case of mobile top-ups, the mobile phone user can go to the ATM and after activating the machine with his password has to enter his mobile number.

The machine would immediately check his account balance and deduct the amount and his phone would be recharged while ticketing through the ATM would be something like e-ticketing, he explained.