CashNoCash to Walnut: Dealing with demonetisation through these apps

A surfeit of apps and websites is offering help in this time of demonetisation. While some point towards ATMs with cash, others are pranks and ways to pass time while standing in bank queues. Yet others claim to help get rid of your unaccounted for money. Abhik Sen lists a few useful ones

Walnut

Available for Android and iOS, this finance management app shows ATMs with cash in green (and helpfully also mentions whether or not the queue is short). Recently active ATMs are shown in orange (they may or may not have cash), while those in grey are the ones that have been active in the past few days. This crowd-sourced app is fairly accurate, but it will need to access your text messages and emails to manage your finances.  

CashNoCash

The website, cashnocash.com, has been added to my favourites tab recently. With a clean interface and a simple method of putting in the PIN code or letting the browser detect your location, this website classifies ATMs into three categories: green denotes cash; amber denotes wait (that could mean a long queue) and red means no cash. While this is fairly accurate, there’s the chance that someone might have classified an ATM wrongly, like I did while checking this website.

CMS ATM Finder

This website (atmfinder.cms.com), run by cash logistics company CMS, shows ATMs serviced by the company that have cash. Using a drop-down menu, you first need to select the state and city; then scroll down to your locality to find the ATM. The list apparently only shows ATMs that are working, that is, with cash — a claim I found to be true at ATMs in east Delhi. The website links to the location of the ATM on Google Maps. One can report if an ATM has stopped working.

ATMsearch.in

The website, atmsearch.in, has been developed by Lokesh (@WoCharLog) and gained a lot of traction immediately after demonetisation. One can search by PIN code on the Spartan interface and users can upload useful details about ATMs, such as the number of people in queue and so on. But the popularity of the app can prove to be its undoing as I rarely found it showing any results during day time. At ungodly hours like 3.30 am, I found a lot of information, but was unable to verify if the ATM, indeed, was working