The Hindu Business Line : Coming soon at ATMs: Passbook updating facility

Convenience factor
Automated updating of pass books would free up staff for cross-selling, other marketing activities.
This becomes critical in today’s scenario with most banks focusing on increasing their fee-income.

Priya Nair

Mumbai, Dec 17

To get your passbook updated, now, you probably have to wait in a long queue at the branch counter. Soon, it may be possible to do it by just punching a few keys at the ATM. Banks are looking to offer passbook updating through ATMs.

The facility, which has proved popular in countries such as Spain, the UK, Canada and Argentina, could reach Indian shores by April next year, said Mr Manjunath Rao, Country Manager, Sales of Financial Solutions for NCR Corporation India.

The company provides ATM machines and offers management services to banks such as SBI, HDFC and HSBC.

Customers who are most likely to be thrilled with this facility are pensioners. Mr Rao said, “In Spain, where our ATMs have this, pensioners have been very happy with the results. In fact, passbook is like an identity and most of them want it synchronised with their banking transactions.”

ATMs will cost more

This would, however, increase the cost of ATMs by about 25 per cent from the current levels, which are upwards of about Rs 6 lakh, depending on the kind of the machine. Updating passbooks will involve technological changes like changing the interface of the ATM (the ATM screen), bar coding in the paper or match stripe to identify the customer, thermal printing and good quality paper.

As service providers can remotely manage the ATMs, it is possible to predict beforehand when the stock of paper is diminishing or report similar other glitches, Mr Rao said.

Enquiries from PSBs

Typically, private banks have been one step ahead of their public sector counterparts when it comes to technology. But not in this case. Mr Rao said, “We have had enquiries from some large public sector banks. For them passbook is a social responsibility. They cannot do away with it.”

For public sector banks, automated updating of pass books through ATMs would free up staff for cross selling and other marketing activities, said a senior official in charge of personal banking at a large public sector bank. This becomes critical in today’s scenario, as most banks are focusing on increasing their fee-income, the official added.

Private banks offer passbooks only if customers ask for them. But they do send regular quarterly or monthly statements and additional statements as required by their customers.

Mr Aspy Engineer, Vice-President, Alternate Channels, Retail Banking, Axis Bank, said, “If we offer statement printing at the ATM it is an additional interactive feature for the customer. It is quite a cost to have an additional printer and to ensure that papers are stacked and so on. Also, unless it is a paid service, it may get misused.”

Standalone machine

It is also possible to have a standalone machine in the ATM kiosk for updating the passbooks. NCR is exploring both possibilities jointly with some banks, Mr Manjunath added.

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