India after demonetisation: Over 350 ATMs shut in three months

New Delhi: The government's aggressive push towards making India a cashless society is resulting in reduction of ATM count in the country. The impact can clearly be seen as the number of ATMs has reportedly gone down by 358 between June and August 2017.

The primary reason behind the decline is that people have switched over to other online cashless platforms such as Paytm since the government's demonetisation drive in November last year.

It has led the lenders to believe that they can function with a lesser number of kiosks.

Even though the latest dip in the ATM number, i.e. 0.16 percent, maybe miniscule count, it's significant because ATMs increased at a compounded rate of 16.4 percent over the past four years. Notably, it is the first time the number of ATMs has declined.

The maintenance for the ATMs is fairly high especially in the metro cities.

As per media reports, State Bank of India after merging with associate banks has shut down many ATMs. SBI has 59,291 ATMs in June which has come down to 59,200 by August.

Similarly, Punjab National Bank reduced the number to 10,083 from 10,502 and HDFC Bank to 12,225 from 12,230.