More ATM Transactions in India

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Hi Friends,

Self service channels are expanding in India with grwoth rate matching that of US and UK. At present, banks in India have very limited number of transactions to offer their customers.

1. Basic Transactions to cater to banking requirements of customers (Internal Product Offerings)

• Cash withdrawal
• Cash and Cheque deposit (Processed offline)
• Balance Inquiry
• Fund Transfer (To same Customer )
  
• Instruction for the bank (Cheque book request, statement request etc.)
  

[Few banks like IDBI bank always innovate to create padigree of offering Money Transfer across VISA card holders]

2. Value added Transactions (Co-Branded products)
(Also called as Retail Partnership)

• Bill Payment (Consumers of utilities like Power, Post Paid Telephone/mobile conn,Water,Credit Card etc.)
  
• Mobile Top ups (To charge your Pre Paid Mobile Connection after debiting your account online)
• Coupon Dispensing
• (Usually less and yet to pickup but few aggressive banks have done good experiments)
  

Benefit for the retail partners are plenty and some are for you to ponder.

• Shorter Collection Cycle
• Higher Customer Satisfaction (Single Window Payment is always less hassle for Customers)
  
• Focussed Branding and High Brand Recall en-mass
  
• Increase in second sales (Some guys use Gorilla Marketing using ATM Channel)
  

Ticketing was never explored to large extent except "RAILWAY TICKETING and SEASON TICKETING" experimented by Indian Railways. It was sucess but, due to labour union problems it was implemented partially.

I here wanted to emphasize that, banks and goverment need to subsidies the usage of self service channels and generate income for lower portion of Pyramid similar to what Public Telecom operators have done "The famous PCO reveloution". It ensured that, rural is well connected with urban but, lacks in infrastucture and fiscal logistics.

Now it's time to be happy that, something very drastic and important happening on ATM Ticketing in India.

As per the news release, Petrol stations; bank ATMs and mobile phones are all set to become distribution channels for low cost airline Air Deccan in the coming weeks.

The airline has signed up with oil giant HPCL to retail tickets from its 6000 pan-India outlets from third week of March. Air Deccan Managing Director G.R Gopinath said the rollout will happen in Bangalore and will be expanded to other points in a phased manner.

HPCL officials said since most of its petrol outlets especially the 2500 urban locations were all wired -- internet connection -- it could quickly put up ticket dispensing kiosks.

Mobile Commerce is also not behind and wear more sophisticated face:

Air Deccan will also introduce sale of tickets through mobile SMS. The entire transaction will be enabled by the mobile service provider where-in the necessary information such as availability of seats, fares etc will be displayed on messaging (by SMS) a certain number, following which the ticket can be purchased after giving the credit card number. Similarly, bank ATMs will also be wired for airline ticket sales shortly, Mr Gopinath said making the task easier.

Food for Thought:

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