ATMs will take more days to be fully functional, more pain in store for general public

MUMBAI: As people queue up to their bank branches for new notes and dispose off their old Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 denomination notes for the second consecutive day they are in for more pain as automatic teller machines ( ATMs) cannot be expected to be up and running smoothly for another five days.

While cash logistics companies are trying to replenish the cash at these outlets on a war footing, they have been able to pull out only 73% of the defunct currency notes and they expect the pain to sustain for the customers for atleast another week.

Hamstringed by exhausted man power, complicated accounting procedures at bank’s currency desks and technical difficulties at teller machines logistics companies are finding cash replenishment a very difficult exercise.

"The new notes are 26% smaller in dimension and hence they cannot be currently dispensed by the cash machines. Engineers need to physically visit the 2 lakh ATMs in the country to reconfigure them for the new notes, which is bound to take a lot more time," said Rituraj Sinha, president of the Cash Logistics Association of India.

Because of this difficulty ATMs are only being stocked with 100 denomination notes thereby reducing their total capacity to around Rs 10 lakh instead of the maximum of around Rs 50 lakh.

"Further because of high demand for cash ATMs are getting five times more footfalls thereby they are getting empty within 3 to 4 hours against 3 days previously, this is causing further stress on the logistics systems," said Sinha.