News

Euronet making India hub of Asia/Pac operations

November 12, 2003

MUMBAI, India - Euronet Worldwide is considering making India the processing hub for its Asia- Pacific operations. Euronet operates in the country through its 100 percent subsidiary Euronet Services India.

According to a report in the Business Standard, Euronet operates an Indian ATM network under the brand Cashnet, with IDBI Bank as the settlement bank. Citibank, Standard Chartered Bank and UTI Bank are the other member banks.

"We want to expand the ATM switch in India to cater to the processing and monitoring operations throughout the Asia Pacific region," said Loney Antony, managing director of Euronet Services India. "Instead of duplicating the infrastructure in each of the countries, we can run the operations seamlessly through India as is being done in Europe."

Other than India, the company has Asia/Pacific operations in Australia, New Zealand and Indonesia.

In Europe, Euronet runs its switch through a Budapest a processing center that serves 14 countries across the region. Euronet drives 4,000 ATMs in Europe, 2,000 of which it owns.

"The key for us is to build up volumes to reduce transaction processing costs. We would be able to offer transactions at a cheaper rate. The plan to operationalize India would kick off in the next six to nine months," Antony said.

According to the Business Standard, Euronet has invested $2 million in India; the total planned investment for the first couple of years is $5 million.

Other banks are reportedly in the process of joining the Cashnet network. Sources said that Corporation Bank, Bank of Punjab, Centurion Bank and Development Credit Bank are likely to join the network, which would increase the total number of ATMs to around 2,500.

The company is also processing around 1,000 mobile top-ups per day. "We are looking at one million transactions a month by March. We have already tied up with Hutch and AirTel nationally," Antony said.

Euronet processes 20 million transactions every month in Europe.