ATM Operators See Rs 120-cr Bounty in Rs 200-note Recalibration

Mumbai: Banks have started recalibrating the cash vending machines (ATMs) to dispense the new Rs 200 banknotes which were introduced last August.

There are nearly 2.4 lakh automatic teller machines (ATMs), which includes around 30,000 cash recyclers. A cash recycler machine can dispense and accept cash.

According to industry experts, the overall recalibration process may cost banks Rs 100-120 crore. "We started recalibration a few days back with some banks. We have done about a few thousand ATMs for about five-six banks," ATM manufacturer and service provider NCR Corporation India managing director Navroze Dastur said.

Each ATM has four cassettes and banks decide on which denomination of the currency is to be put in each of them and then accordingly recalibration is done, he said.

The process will require an engineer to visit each ATM location and recalibrate one of the cassettes to accommodate the Rs 200 notes, Dastur said.

Hitachi Payment Services managing director Loney Antony said "based on the banks' direction we have been recalibrating the cassette for Rs 2000 for Rs 200 notes now.

Over time, the current mix of Rs 2,000 and Rs 500 notes will move to Rs 100, Rs 200 and Rs 500 notes."

He said the process started a few months back and only 4,000 of the total of 2.4 lakh machines have so far been recalibrated.

Of the 2.4 lakh cash dispensing and cash recyclers machines, NCR has deployed close to 1.10 lakh ATMs. Hitachi has 55,000, which it has either deployed or managing it.

Dastur said the average cost to recalibrate an ATM is Rs 3,000-4,000, the cost to recalibrate 2 lakh ATMs would be around Rs 100 crore.

It could be noted that before this, banks had undertaken a massive recalibration exercise after the November 2016 note-ban.

The Reserve Bank had then asked banks to recalibrate their ATMs in a very short duration to accommodate new Rs 500 and Rs 2,000 notes.

"This time there is no emergency or rush. It is going to be a better and planned activity, spread over a larger number of days. If it is a planned one then it is a 90 days activity," Dastur added.