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The banking sector believes that setting up e-ticketing kiosks at railway stations will help the banks spread their network and increase the customer base. E-ticketing kiosks are provided by banks to their customers at railway stations to book tickets through debit card.

The Indian Railways had signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with State Bank of India, Punjab National Bank, Bank of Baroda, Indian Bank, Canara Bank, Union Bank of India and Dena Bank to set up 1,392 automated teller machines at railway stations across the country. Of these, 856 will be e-ticketing kiosks.

Mr M.S. Sundara Rajan, chairman and managing director of Indian Bank, said, “Commuters can now get printed tickets without having to stand in queues at reservation counters. This will help the banks to expand their network into smaller cities and give them a competitive advantage over others.”

Indian Bank was the first bank to install an e-ticketing kiosk in December, 2007. It has already set up 10 e-ticketing kiosks and has plans to set up 24 more within a year. The Union Bank of India too set up its first e-ticketing kiosk at Delhi in December and is gearing up to set up similar facilities.

Industry Chamber Assocham said the workload on bank employees has nearly halved in the last few years due to installation of ATM facilities in various areas. According to an estimate of the industry chamber, workload on over 65,000 cashiers has fallen by 50 per cent in the last five years due to growing installations of offsite and onsite ATM facilities in urban, semi-urban and rural bank branches.

According to RBI data, there are a total of 88 banks, of which 27 fall in the public sector, 28 are old private sector banks and nine are new private sector banks. There are 19,547 banks branches located in rural India and 12,238 bank branches located in semi-urban India. The number of urban bank branches are 10,126. State Bank of India with its seven SBIs associates has the largest number of banking branches in India, numbering 13,661 and the largest ATMs centre of about 6000. Totally there are about 17,000 ATMs, while branches across the country are over 50,000.

Latest decision of RBI says that it would issue a directive to entire banking community and reduce transaction cost for every single withdrawal, this will make ATM operations more popular for bank customers and reducing the workload of cashiers. With the installation of ATMs, the existing cashiers in the banking sector are now confined to large and bulk cash withdrawals, making their entries and submitting the transactions tally to the respective managers. With increase in number of ATMs, clients prefer to walk across the ATM facility, make cash withdrawals and know their latest banking transaction statements.

Venugopal Dhoot, Assocham President said that the installation has created employment engagements for thousands of semi-skilled people above the age of 52-55 years, to guard at ATM locations, most of whom are superannuated from armed and paramilitary forces and other disciplines.