India has over one lakh ATMs

Mumbai, Nov 13 (IANS) The banking system in India notched a whopping one lakh plus Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) in the country, with public sector banks accounting for a lion's share, latest data released Tuesday by National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has revealed.

By October, the total number of ATMs in the country was 1,04,500 with 61,500 -- or 59 percent -- belonging to the public sector banks and State Bank of India Group, the NPCI said.

Private sector and foreign banks together have installed 41,800 ATMs, or 40 percent.

The remaining one percent or 1,150 ATMs are of small, co-operative or rural banks.

All public sector banks in India are part of the NPCI since June 2010.

The NPCI said that all the banks put together have plans to install an additional one lakh ATMs over the next two years.

This would raise the number of ATMs per million population from the present 85 to about 170 ATMs, or more than double, the NPCI said.

The NFS facilitates routing of the ATM transactions through inter-connectivity between the bank's systems, thereby enabling the ATM/debit card holders to utilise the services of any ATM of a connected bank.

The NFS processes over 200 million transactions every month.