All Indian ATMs to interconnect by next July

ATMs of all public and private sector banks in India will be brought under the umbrella of the Reserve Bank of India's national financial switch by July 2005, said ATMMarketplace.com in a report.

The project, aimed at inter-connecting the ATMs of all banks, is being coordinated by the Institute for Development and Research in Banking Technology. Euronet Worldwide, through its Euronet Services India division, is implementing the ATM connectivity project for IDRBT.

Three banks – Corporation Bank, Bank of Baroda and ICICI Bank – have already joined the network, which launched officially in August. Seven other banks will likely be connected to the switch by January.

‘The IDRBT is not concerned with the charges that banks will levy for using each other's ATM network. That will be left to the banks to decide. IDRBT is solely working on ensuring that money can be withdrawn from or deposited into any ATM of the country, irrespective of the bank in which a person has opened an account,’ said IDRBT director V.P. Gulati.

IDRBT also runs the INFINET (INdian FInancial NETwork), the national communications backbone of the Indian banking sector.