Date:08/04/2006 URL: http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2006/04/08/stories/2006040803570600.htm

Back ATMs cushion impact of indefinite SBI strike

Raja Simhan T E

Fully stacked machines, partner network prove big help

HANDY MACHINE: People queuing up at an ATM of SBI in Chennai. - K. Pichumani

Chennai , April 7

Automated Teller Machines (ATM) have come to the rescue of State Bank of India (SBI) customers as the strike by the bank's employees entered the fifth day on FridayA number of customers are able to withdraw money and also access their accounts through the ATMs of SBI and its partner banks, according to a source.

Anticipating the strike, SBI stacked its 6,000-plus ATMs across the country full of cash, which should take care of the requirements for a week in most of the machines.

SBI also roped in nine of its partner banks to help customers withdraw cash through an additional network of 8,000 plus ATMs.

SBI avails of bilateral ATM sharing services through FSSNeT of the Chennai-based Financial Software & Systems (FSS).

It has ATM transaction sharing arrangements with Andhra Bank, Corporation Bank, Dena Bank, Indian Bank, HDFC Bank, IndusInd Bank, Punjab National Bank, UCO Bank and UTI Bank.

No transaction fee

This means that an SBI customer can walk into an ATM of any of these partner banks and withdraw money.

SBI said it would not charge its customers for using the partner banks' ATMs during the strike period. Usually, there is a transaction fee for customers using other banks' ATMs, the source said.

SBI has issued about 22 million ATM cards, and on an average each day 1.4 million transactions happen on its ATMs across the country. The number of transactions was almost the same during the first couple of days of the strike period, the source said.

However, in the last couple of days SBI customers have been using more of partner banks' ATMs to withdraw money.

For instance, on April 6, about 1.30 lakh SBI customers used ATMs of partner banks, and the number was 1.20 lakh on April 5. On April 1, the number was only 40,000, the source said.

An ATM has two or four stacks, and each stack can have 2,000 to 4,000 notes. Usually, the stacks are loaded either to half or one-fourth of capacity, but were fully stacked before the strike, the source said.

FSSNeT, the outsourcing arm of FSS, provides shared ATM transaction sharing services (bilateral and multilateral), ATM and POS (point of sale) driving, authorisation and routing, dispute resolution, settlement and back office services. A high end Tandem/BASE24 switch serves as a central processor to authorise, route and switch the transactions to the respective networks and authorisers.

Banks wishing to share ATM transactions need to have a single connection to FSSNeT, and via this connection, the FSSNeT switch will exchange transactions with other connected banks, the source said.