WILL MOBILE TAKE THE PLACE OF ATM IN INDIA

Brick and mortar banks had better be prepared to face a potential threat of mobile service providers breaking into their bastion. If Mr Sunil Bharti Mittal, Chairman and Managing Director of India's largest mobile services provider Bharti, has his way then banks need not set up branches in remote villages or for that matter ATMs in every nook and cranny of the country!
His solution to the problem of financial exclusion across the country is the ubiquitous mobile in the hands of millions of Indians.
“There is no need to set up a branch in every village or for that matter an ATM in every corner of the country. Every mobile phone is a bank on the move. The technology is at work,” said Mr Mittal in his remarks at a panel discussion on ‘World is Transformed' hosted by the State Bank of India late Sunday evening to celebrate the implementation of 100 per cent core banking across the State Bank Group.
Given that information and communication technology is at the root of modern banking, it remains to be seen if mobile service providers will diversify into banking.
“India is on its own march to find its own destiny in the 21 {+s} {+t} century. We (corporates) cannot be something on the global stage without being something in India first……The world is rebalancing itself.
We will be among the top 5 economies in the world in the next few decades,” said Mr Mukesh Ambani, Chairman and Managing Director, Reliance Industries, at the panel discussion. Samutkarsha (growth and progress for all) and Samskruti (age-old culture) should underpin India's economic growth, he added.
According to Mr Wim Elfrink, Chief Globalisation Officer, CISCO, his company took the decision to locate its second headquarters outside the US in India as “if you can't be relevant in this part of the world (India) then there is no future.”
India, with its young and educated population, democratic government, growing economy, is a compelling story.
Meanwhile, SBI and its associate banks have completed implementation of one of the biggest core banking solution (CBS) platforms in the world in association with Tata Consultancy Services.
Implementation of CBS now allows the SBI Group to execute an average of about 30 million transactions per day with peak transactions reaching 37 million through a vast network of over 17,700 branches and around 20,000 ATMs covering over 267 million customer accounts across the country and overseas