News

India's private banks neck-and-neck in 'most ATMs' race

March 25, 2013

From last January 31 to this, the three largest private banks in India increased the size of their collective ATM networks by 31 percent. Leading the pack is HDFC, whose network grew from 7,346 to 10,583, expanding by 44 percent and putting it in first place for total number of ATMs.

ICICI, the country's largest private lender, increased its fleet from 7,952 to 10,040 (26 percent), and Axis Bank grew its fleet from 8,475 to 10,391 (22.6 percent), according to a report by The Hindu Business Line.

Regarding HDFC's leap from third to first place in total number of ATMs, the bank's executive director, Paresh Sukthankar, told The Hindu Business Line that the bank had previously fallen short on ATM expansion.

"So we wanted to catch up," he said. "If you look at our transaction pie chart, a large volume of transactions go[es] through Internet and ATM. "It is important for us to have adequate number of ATMs. If our customer uses other banks' ATMs, it costs us."

In India, an ATM user's first five "off-us" transactions each month are charged back to the customer's home bank at the rate of 15 rupees (28 cents) for a withdrawal and 5 rupees for a balance inquiry (9 cents). So, the more ATMs a bank has, the less likely that it will be picking up those charges.

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