CMS Info Systems, reportedly India’s largest cash management services company, a cash management services company, won a contract of at least Rs.450 crore (approx. US$ 72M) from India’s largest commercial bank, State Bank of India (SBI) to deploy more than 7,850 automated teller machines (ATMs) across the country, the company said in a statement on Friday.
Rajiv Kaul, Executive Vice-Chairman and CEO of CMS, said the contract is the largest in the world, but this could not be independently verified.
In the deployment, CMS will provide SBI end-to-end solutions implementation services, ATM installation, maintenance and support for the next seven years. Kaul, however, is clear that he does not want to become a hardware maker, but wants to remain a solutions player.
On the hardware front, after 18-months-long negotiation, CMS tied-up with Nautilus Hyosung of South Korea, which is the world’s fourth largest ATM maker. The new systems will be technically superior compared to SBI’s current ATMs, said Kaul. It will come with features like voice guidance systems and readers which will be able to read chip-embedded debit cards.
The Indian market presents a huge opportunity in the areas of ATM deployment and management. Some well known security services and other companies such as G4S, SIS group, Checkmate, ISS SDB and Brinks Arya are also active players in this business. The domestic ATM market has witnessed significant growth in the past four years. India had 124,072 ATMs operational as on 30 July, according to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) website. India still is low on penetration with just 110 ATMs per million people. In emerging countries, the number is almost nine times higher. In the next three years, the market is expected to double, which Kaul said translates to an annual increase in revenues of Rs 2,000 crores.
SBI currently has around 30,500 ATMs, according to its website. CMS said it will install, maintain and provide support services for the ATMs for seven years, adding that the ATMs will be deployed across India “with a significant focus on semi-urban and rural areas”.
White label ATMs (WLAs), for which RBI has issued licences, are also expected to help in the penetration. These will be private label ATMs and will not belong to any bank’s brand.
On 27 June, Tata Communications Payment Solutions Ltd, a subsidiary of Tata Communications Ltd, unveiled Indicash, touted as India’s first network of white label ATMs. The first Indicash ATM was inaugurated at Chandrapada, a village in Maharashtra’s Thane district.
Tata Communications plans to deploy 15,000 Indicash ATMs in three years—67% of which will be in semi-urban and rural areas and 33% in metro and urban markets.
