MAKING 2 LAKH ATMs WORK AGAIN

HT, 13 Nov 2016, Kolkata: Recalibrating cash machines in tune with new banknotes will take two to three weeks, finance minister Arun Jaitley said on Saturday. Here’s a look at the reasons why:

‘TECHTONIC’ SHIFTEach ATM machine has four cassettes. Two of these cassettes were used to hold notes in denomination of `500, and the remaining two were split between `1,000 and `100 notes. The software for these will have to be reconfigured. Apart from software updates, the hardware of machines is said to require adjustments too as the new `2,000 banknotes are of a different size.

PHYSICAL RECONFIGURATION

The reconfiguration cannot be conducted remotely and an engineer must physically visit each ATM. The process could take three to four hours per machine. An engineer can fix between two and three ATMs a day.

2.17lakh ATMs across the country, which means if 10,000 engineers are pressed into service, they will take at least 10 days to complete the job.

800-1,000 is the number average transactions per ATM has shot up to since the service reopened. The earlier figure was a mere 125.

85% of the total value of banknotes in circulation at the time of PM Modi’s Nov 8 announcement was accounted for by `500 and `1,000 notes, both of which have ceased to be legal tender.