Credit, debit cards are futile in floods

The flood after record rainfall deprived Mumbaiites from the comforts of their credit and debit cards.

Many had to go without fuel for their cars as their credit and debit cards were not accepted at petrol pumps.

In most cases, leased lines from MTNL and Tata Indicom were not functioning. And in rest of the cases it was impossible to get cash due to flooding of ATM centres or power cut.

Some ATMs proved irritants due to non-availability of cash as there was no refilling on last Wednesday and Thursday. These days were declared holidays by Reserve Bank of India (RBI), said service providers.

"MTNL leased lines are down and switches are not working We expect to solve this problem today," said M V Nair, chairman and managing director, Dena Bank.

IDBI Bank, despite having Tata Indicom leased lines for back-up support, was unable to keep its ATMs functional. The ATM problem persisted till Wednesday afternoon, said G V Nageshawara Rao, chief executive officer, commercial banking unit, IDBI.

Citibank said some of its ATMs were out of order. "We have 100 ATM centers in Mumbai. The impact of Mumbai rains was limited to a few ATMs that had to be shutdown on account of power shutdown, loss of connectivity or water logging in the buildings/complexes housing the ATMs," an official spokesperson said.

Nearly 50 ICICI ATMs in the Mumbai were affected. The bank was working at making most of the failed ATMs functional by Friday evening.

Euronet Services India, from whom several banks outsource ATM operations, faced difficulties refilling ATMs as around 75 outsourced ATMs were affected.

Loney Antony, managing director, Euronet Services, said almost 25 per cent higher cash withdrawals were witnessed at ATMs operational on Tuesday and Wednesday.

"We don't plan for eventualities like power supply cut. The UPS systems at ATM centres are meant to provide standby power for about two hours," he said.