News

India's ATM operators face one more costly update

July 27, 2018

Indian ATM operators, have withstood a series of setbacks over the past 18 months or so: demonitization and income-killing cash shortages; expensive security mandates and software updates; tightened surcharge rules; and other obligations.

Now here comes one more trial: As soon as August, the Reserve Bank of India will begin to introduce the nation's new 100 rupee note into circulation — before ATM deployers have even finished recalibrating for the previously released 200 rupee note.

According to a report by The Hindu, deployers have said that recalibrating for the new downsized 100 rupee note could take up to a year to complete on India's 240,000 ATMs and cost as much as 1 billion rupees ($14.5 million) in total.

Coincidentally, $14.5 million is the same amount that the government has mandated as a constant minimum net worth for ATM operators and cash-in-transit companies.

According to the article, India's banks won't begin recalibrating for the new 100 rupee note until they are certain that the central bank has a sufficient quantity of the notes on hand to keep their ATMs operating.