 "A security personnel stands guard in front of the gate of the State Bank of India (SBI) regional office in Kolkata")
Country's largest lender State Bank of India has become the top merchant acquiring bank in the country with 2.96 lakh installed point-of-sale (PoS) terminals as of February 2016.
SBI is followed by HDFC Bank (2.81 lakh), Axis Bank (2.58 lakh) and ICICI Bank (2 lakh), the RBI data showed.
"Being 'Banker to Every Indian', we are committed to promoting electronic payments in all parts of the country and provide strong push for achieving the goal of less-cash economy envisaged by the government," SBI said in a statement.
These four banks together contribute to more than three-fourths of the total 13.63 lakh PoS terminals deployed in the country.
As of April 30, 2016, SBI deployed 3.07 lakh PoS terminals at more than 3,800 centres. Out of the total, it has installed 44% in metros, 30% in urban areas, 18% in semi-urban geographies and 8% in rural areas.
During 2015-16, almost 40% of the growth of acquiring industry in terms of number of terminals was driven by SBI alone by deploying more than 1 lakh PoS terminals.
More than 30,000 of these terminals are contactless terminals.
In the current fiscal, the bank plans to add further one lakh PoS terminals to enhance card acceptance infrastructure particularly in tier-3 and below centres, it said.
