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India's J&K Bank expands ATM network to 1,000 units

The J&K fleet serves 2.3 million cardholders, including customers in some of the most remote reaches of the Himalayas, the FI says.

January 7, 2016

Taking part in India's drive to extend banking services to underserved populations, J&K Bank has managed to expand its installed ATM base more than threefold within five years, completing its one-thousandth deployment before the end of 2015, according to a press release.

Of the total, 900 ATMs are installed in the bank's home state of Jammu and Kashmir in the Himalayas. These are divided among the state's three regions: 327 in Jammu; 568 in Kashmir; and 23 in Ladakh, including one location at Dras, the second coldest place in the world, the FI said.

Between 2011 and 2015, J&K installed 676 ATMs across the state, 130 of these within the past year alone.

"Our ATM network is robust and we are penetrating further deep into remote locations to extend the benefit of this machine to the people living in these areas," J&K Bank Chairman and CEO Mushtaq Ahmad said in the release. "It's not matter of installing an ATM at a place; what we focus is to establish more and more ATM hubs at the locations where footfall is huge."

Currently J&K Bank operates 831 branches (including hundreds of branches in far-flung locations) serving more than 2.3 million debit cardholders, the release said.