New Delhi:
The new Rs 200 notes which were rolled out by the government on Friday would not be available via automated teller machines (ATM) anytime soon. The first tranche of the new note issued by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) will be available at select RBI offices and banks.
Friday being a bank holiday in some parts of the country, the notes may not be available over the counter. It will take at least a week to get the new notes from ATMs.
This wait is on account of the time it takes for ATM manufacturers to recalibrate the machines, given that there are over 200,000 ATMs in the country. A typical ATM has 3-4 cassettes, which are equipped to handle different denominations of notes. “To be able to provide Rs200 denomination notes, the cassettes have to be reconfigured, which will take time. We still have not received these notes to understand the dimension for the configuration,” said Radha Rama Dorai, managing director–ATM and allied services, FIS, an ATM manufacturer.
Cassettes are small removable boxes that hold all the cash inside an ATM. Each cassette has to be configured to dispense notes of a particular value. Currently, the ATMs can dispense Rs 100, and new Rs 500 and Rs 2,000 notes.
“Since the length of the new Rs200 currency is different from the existing currency in circulation (Rs100, Rs500 and Rs2,000), cassette calibration is required to be done. ATM manufacturers need to do a complete testing of the new Rs200 denomination currency and provide the parameters which need to be configured at the ATM by an engineer.
At ATM switch level, we will require to do switch configuration and complete testing of new Rs200 denomination currency before implementation,” said Himanshu Pujara, managing director, Euronet Services India Pvt. Ltd.
