While there has been a steady increase in debit card issuance over the last 10 months of the fiscal year, the same is not in sync with ATM machine expansion, i.e. the number of ATMs have infact come down heavily, resulting in inconvenience both for bank customers and banks.

Faster squeeze at ATMs call for an increase in cash replenishment at a higher rate. And all this comes at a time when the banks as well as white-label ATMs have been asked to put in place lockable cassettes in ATMs that will be swapped at the time of cash replenishment.

Also, ATMs have been asked to upgrade with supporting editions of operating system.
The situation further calls for action as DBT amount credited into the subscriber's account need a debit card.

Also, given the huge amount provisioned towards bad loans, banks are reluctant to shell out a high sum of Rs. 3200- Rs. 4800 crore to attempt at introducing lockable cassettes in ATMs.

GoodReturns.in