White-label ATMs from Tatas in remote places soon

The Reserve Bank of India has recently authorised four non-bank entities for setting up and operating White Label ATMs (WLAs) including Tata Communications Payment Solutions, Prizm Payment Services Pvt Ltd and Vakrangee and Muthoot Finance from Kochi.  

Tata Communications Payment Solutions, which is the first Indian company to start rolling out white-label ATMs, is targeting to open 15,000 such ATMs across the country by June 2016 under Indicash brand, it said here on Monday.

The company, which rolled out the first Indicash ATM in June 2013, has already established 1,000 owned ATMs, and 65 per cent of these are located in towns and villages with less than one lakh population.

The ratio is just opposite of the average of the country that has about 1.55 lakh ATMs.

Federal Bank is the sponsor bank for Tata Communications Payment Solutions white-label ATMs, and the company is negotiating with other banks for such arrangements.

India is an under-penetrated ATM market with only 98 ATMs for every 10 lakh of population.

ATM density in China is 211; in the UK, it is 530; and in the US, it is 1,390. White-label ATMs account for nearly 50 per cent of ATMs in the US and 70 per cent in Canada.

Currently, Tata Communications Payment Solution manages about 17,000 ATMs owned by about 37 banks across the country. “By June 2016, we target to manage 50,000 ATMs in India, accounting to about 25 per cent of the market,” CEO Sanjeev Patel said.

Besides Tata Communications Payment Solutions, Muthoot Finance, SREI Infrastructure Finance, Prizm Payments and AGS Transact are among the 12 companies that have received in-principle approval from the banking regulator to establish white-label ATMs.