Vijayawada, Nov 27: The public-sector State Bank of India will network all the ATMs in 49 major cities, including those in this commercial city, under the 'SBI connect project' and convert ATM cards into debit cards early next year. The decision is in the wake of an SBI study, which found that Indians were culturally comfortable with debit cards and were averse to the credit card culture, popular in western countries, its deputy general manager N P Subramaniyam said today.

The debit cards would be linked to master cards and could be used in all the merchandise outlets in the 49 cities across the country including the metropolitan cities, he told reporters here.
The study conducted by SBI, which is much younger to other players in credit-card operation, also found that people in the country were not ready to take use of loans and even those having credit cards, in a majority cases, paid back the amount in a couple of days itself even though the credit period was for 45 days, Subramaniyam revealed. Bureau Report