Demonetisation: ATM market leader NCR sets up war rooms

Welcoming the demonetisation drive, NCR Corporation, the market leader in the ATM space with nearly half the share, said it is working overtime to update the system so that there is "minimum inconvenience" to the public.
"We will cohesively work with all parties involved like banks, cash-in-transit and other service providers to ensure consumers are not impacted in any way and things get normal in the next couple of days. We have created war rooms to design strategy and appoint people who will look at the developments in specific geographic locations," Navroze Dastur, MD of NCR India, told PTI.
There are over 2.2 lakh ATMs in the country, 47 per cent of which are NCR machines. It also services ATMs from other manufacturers as well.

He said NCR technicians will visit each machine to carry out cassette configuration changes. The company is keeping its field force informed and ready to make changes as required.
"At the same time, back-end changes at the (Switch) are also required if banks want to add any new denomination, say Rs 50 or lower in some cases. Cash-in-transit and managed service players will also be involved since many ATMs are managed by them and cash handling is done by them instead of the banks," he said.
Since this involves physical visit to every ATM, he expects this to take some time and is making every effort to ensure this transition happens with minimal impact.

"A more co-ordinated effort among banks, service providers and ATM management companies is being put keeping in mind customer convenience as top priority. Cash supply to ATMs are going to be made available with Rs 100, to start with, and later new Rs 500 in a few days and Rs 2,000 in a short while. We are waiting for a final date from RBI on when this is going to be made available," Dastur said.
He also advised he public not to panic, as their hard-earned money is secure in their banks. ATMs will be up and running in a few days with minimal disruption to consumers, he added.

Typically, an ATM carries as much as 10,000 banknotes at any given point in four of its currency containers known as 'cassettes'. Each of cassettes can contain 2,500 individual notes. Each cassette can only contain one type of notes.