Srei to roll out ATMs in FY14

RBI's licence will allow Srei to set up 9,000 ATMs in rural pockets of the country

Srei Infrastructure Finance Ltd will begin rolling out white-label automated teller machines (ATMs) with 100 of them on a trial basis this fiscal, even as it awaits its banking licence.

White-label ATMs are to be set up by non-banking entities on behalf of 'sponsor banks' without carrying the brand label of any bank, and would be accessible to card-holders of all the banks for a fee.

"We have just received the FIPB (Foreign Investment Promotion Board) clearance for the ATMs. We will not wait for the bank licence for this as we got approval for white label ATMs," Srei Chairman and Managing Director Hemant Kanoria said.

Srei, an infrastructure financing company, is one of the 26 prospective applicants for banking licences.

"On a trial basis, we will set up about 100 ATMs by this fiscal. After that we will rollout the total 9,000 ATMs in phases," he said.

RBI's licence would allow Srei to set up 9,000 ATMs in rural pockets of the country.

Kanoria said cost for each white label ATMs not linked to any single bank would be anywhere between Rs 5 lakh and Rs 10 lakh.

"The entire investment has to come from Srei as we cannot use the franchisee model to setting up of ATMs," Kanoria told PTI.

Under the RBI guidelines, the authorisation for setting up a white label ATM operation would be initially valid for a period of one year and the operators are allowed to charge their customers as per bank charges.

SREI Infrastructure Finance had appointed Bharat Technical Solutions as project management consultant and earlier it sought expression of interest for supply, installation, commissioning, operations and maintenance of white label ATMs.

Kanoria said they will harness its group company's common services centres - Sahaj - locations for setting up the ATMs. Srei Sahaj operates 26,000 centres covering 29 crore people across six states.