The State Bank of India (SBI) group is planning to increase its automated teller

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machines (ATM) network by nearly 7,000 ATMs from the present 18,000 to 25,000 by the end of the year. The bank claims that nearly one-third of this network can be used by the visually impaired.

“We have about one-third of our ATM network enabled for the visually impaired. We will scale up this number as we go forward. We are planning to install another 7,000 ATMs by the end of the financial year,” said Amitabh Kumar, general manager of alternate channels and payment systems group.

Banks are veering towards talking ATMs, which are voice-enabled ATMs to help the visually impaired. In a Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and ICICI Bank-led initiative, all private, foreign and Indian banks came together to work out a roadmap for talking ATMs. Chanda Kochhar, CEO and MD, ICICI Bank, said, “The bank is in the process of procuring a large number of talking ATM machines.” ICICI Bank pioneered the concept of talking ATMs in 2001-02, however a large number of ATMs of the bank are still to be converted into visually enabled machines. ICICI Bank has a total of 5,022 ATMs in the country.

Axis Bank has the third largest ATMs network of 4,161 ATMs. “We are in talks with NCR and Diebold to implement our new network of ATMs as talking ATMs,” said Aspy Engineer, vice-president in charge of alternate channels, Axis Bank. The bank plans to end the financial year with 4,400 ATMs.