Demonetisation: These start-ups will help you beat the bank, ATM queues

Banks can use available technology to ease the pain, reports Tech in Asia

Hundreds of millions of people have been queueing up first thing in the morning in front of banks and ATMs across the vast country ever since Prime Minister Narendra Modi made the shock announcement to ban high-denomination currency notes.

Does this have to be such a painful and chaotic process in this age of mobile tech? The answer is a big 'No'. 

Use SMS, not tokens

Singapore and Bangalore-based start-up Lucep, for example, has been trying to get banks to adopt a simple solution it is offering for free to mitigate the crisis. Lucep is in the business of providing artificial intelligence for sales, but it also has a VirtuaQ app to help businesses and organisations avoid making their customers wait physically in long queues. Now it has come up with an SMS-based service for virtual queues, which banks could use for free.

A customer would simply send an SMS to a number and receive a queue ticket from the bank. You could then just land up at the bank or ATM when it’s close to your turn – or at least be informed not to waste your time showing up there because the cash has run out.

Other hacks

Other tech start-ups too have been coming up with hacks for people desperately seeking cash in India. One of them is BookMyChotu. It’s a portal to hire help for housework, shopping, and so on; now you can get someone to stand in a queue by proxy for Rs 90 an hour.

Tapzo launched a new feature – Find the nearest ATM – that tells you which ATMs are near you and when it dispensed cash last. This is an excerpt from Tech in Asia. You can read the full article here