MADURAI
The advent of Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) in the city was considered a boon to bank customers. Initially, entry was restricted. Watchmen guarded them. The place was clean. There was no limit on the number of withdrawals. And the service was free.
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Now, the doors are wide open. Air-conditioning units do not function. Watchmen have vanished from many ATM kiosks. Some ATMs do not provide transaction slips. Some are littered with slips. Withdrawals are restricted. Charges are levied for excess withdrawals. And an annual fee is deducted from accounts.
Some ATMs do not function at all while some work for a few hours or days. Some display ‘no cash’ boards. Some do not dispense cash but deduct money from your account. The customer has to complain and wait for a week to get back the money.
Some deliver only ₹100 notes. Though a customer can withdraw ₹40,000 to ₹50,000 a day, he has to do it multiple times, and in the process he exhausts free transaction limits. No machine in Madurai dispenses ₹200 notes, though officials claim that they are calibrated for the purpose.
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Gullible customers have to guard against conmen who pretend to help them at ATMs but swap the actual cards with fake ones. Smart people have to deal with phishing, fraudulent phone calls and cloning of debit cards. Cash withdrawal during late night hours is also not advisable. The ATMs seem to have lost their sheen under these circumstances.
For, online banking or Point of Sale (PoS) machines kept in all kinds of shops, textile showrooms, petrol bunks, theatres and restaurants come in handy for making payments. These machines are used for goods delivered at home for orders placed over phone or through e-commerce portals.
Banks have introduced mobile wallets. Apps help people book train, bus or flight tickets; recharge prepaid mobile phones or DTH, pay postpaid phone/ electricity bills, call taxi charges and settle money for goods bought in stores. Free credit cards are available but some people do not prefer them.
Cash-back, reward points, discounts or gift vouchers attract people towards digital payments. Cash handling charges beyond a limit in some banks too push people to go digital. A HDFC official says the bank accepts either cheque or online payment for housing loan dues but not cash.
However, digital transactions have a long way to go as the technology is yet to percolate down to rural areas, says a top Canara Bank officer. Bose, a pensioner, and M. Sankar, a farmer, say the limit on free transactions hurts them a lot. A. Paulraj Sekar, a Western music teacher of Tirunagar, and Rathinavel, a civil contractor, say they can’t help but accept deduction of charges beyond free transactions.
B. Singaravelu, Superintendent, Public Works Department, says the ATM of City Union Bank near his office at Tallakulam did not dispense cash but money got debited from his account in the SBI, along with charges, when he attempted withdrawal a few days back.
K. Ganesan, a businessman, says private sector banks maintain their ATMs better than public sector ones and terms Swachh Bharat Abhiyan campaign a humbug, as far as the ATMs are concerned.
S. Samuel, Manager (alternate channel), SBI, asserts that 93% their ATMs are functioning at all times, which is on a par with national average. The ATMs in remote locations go dry in the first few days of every month because they are filled with cash only once in a day. He terms the absence of watchmen in off-site ATMs a policy decision and asserts that the ATMs are equipped with CCTV cameras to take care of untoward incidents. “We keep track of all the ATMs,” he says, and blames private agencies for poor maintenance of select ATMs.
Officials deplore that they do not get adequate currency notes in the denomination of ₹2,000 and ₹200 from the RBI. Notes dispensed by the ATMs too do not come back to banks. There is also no big encouragement for online transactions. So, there seems to be no end in sight to the predicament of customers.