Bangalore, April 10, 2014:  Hard on the heels of the Indian government opening up the ATM business to third party operators -- what the industry calls "white label " ATMs, different from the bank-run "Brown label ATMs" -- the Australia-based BANKTECH Group has stepped in, to set up the first of 9000 bank-neutral ATMs. It has done this through its Indian entity -- - BTI Payments Private Ltd, a joint venture between  the BANKTECH Group and ICICI Ventures.
Their  terminals are  called India1 ATMs -- and the first two were   up and running -- one at Gubbi and the other in Arsikere, both small towns in the Tumkur district of Karnataka state.
"We plan on having a thousand India1 ATMs working by March 2015 -- another 2000 a year from then and another 6000 in the 2016-17 fiscal" explained K. Srinivas, Managing Director & CEO, BTI Payments.  Three out of every four white label ATMs  will be located in the rural hinterland which is currently poorly served with ATMs by the banks, he added.

BTI plans to go further and add other non banking functions -- mobile phone recharge,  travel tickets,  insurance payments etfc -- which will make the India 1 a truly one stop shop of financial services.
David Glen, who heads  the global BANKTECH business, added that  the compan's Indian end has been slowly gaining experience of conditions here by  operating over 8000 point of service terminals and some 700-odd "brown label " terminals for India-based banks.  "The seven years have been a learning experience for us -- and we are now ready to take up the bigger challenge of  white label ATMs, thanks to our great India team and the support of ICICI", Glen added.
There are approximately 150,000 ATMs in India -- a number far short of  the 400,000 or so that the population of banking customers demands ... which is why white-label ATMs which work with all  bank ATM cards  will fill a vital  gap in services.
Established in Sydney Australia in 1991, The BANKTECH Group, parent company of BTI Payments, today manages ATM and POS terminals in Australia, India, Hong Kong, New Zealand and United Arab Emirates and has recently established offices in Shanghai, China. The BANKTECH Group established a wholly owned subsidiary, BANKTECH India in 2006 (recently renamed BTI Payments).