One of the electronic telecommunications devices that enable customers to perform financial transactions, such as cash withdrawals, deposits, transfer funds, or obtaining account information, at any time and without the need for direct interaction with bank staff or other officials associated with the bank is an Automated Teller Machine shortly abbreviated as ATM.
Introduction- Micro ATMs
Automated Teller Machine has made life easier and smoother. However, in the cash crunch scenario of today’s world there is a new small POS (Point of Sale) type machine has come up and revolutionised the trade and business industry i.e. Micro ATMs which is been a boon to everyone.
“Micro ATMs are the mini versions of ATMs. Micro ATMs allows customers to perform financial transaction like cash deposit, withdrawal, and fund transfer with a small electronic device where the customer just has to process card payments at any retail locations of the world. The machine generally contains the card swiping facility and fingerprint scanner.”
How it Works?
The POS terminal reads off the data or information of a customer’s credit or debits card, checks the sufficient balance available in the customer’s bank account and then transfers the funds from the customer’s bank account to the seller’s desired bank account and then records the financial transactions occurred and then prints out a receipt that generally contains date and time of procurement, points of interest of thing acquired, the price tag of things and sums, required data about the arrival strategy of offers and technique for installment. Now-a-days the customer will also receive a SMS alert from the bank about the transaction. The POS terminal connects to the banking network via the General Packet Radio Services (GPRS, a packet-based wireless communication service that promises data rates from 56 up to 114 Kbps and continuous connection to the Internet for mobile phone and computer users) to perform the banking transactions.
Benefits:
Probable transactions that can be done at Micro ATM are cash deposit, cash withdrawal, fund transfer, balance enquiry, Service request acceptance, Aadhar Seeding, eKYC based saving account opening and some more. It is mandatory to link your Aadhar card with your bank account to avail this facility or benefits of the service such as banking services can be carried out even in the remote area where there is no sign of dense population. Some other benefits of using a Micro ATM are low cost option for the existing ATM, portable device, Easy to carry, easy to setup anywhere, Biometric enabled secured transactions so less fault of human driven mistakes, Interoperable device and can work for any bank, useful to help people during demonetization processes.
UIDAI contributions
Unique Identification Authority of India has mentioned that crores of individuals can use Aadhar Micro ATMs for banking transactions even without an ATM card or PIN. UIDAI has stated that it provides complete payment solution where individual’s Aadhar number is enough to make transactions of large worth. Aadhar is a 12 digit random number states as a Unique Identity issued by UIDAI to all residents of India or citizens of India. To provide doorstep banking services UIDAI has started to set up more than 4 lakh Micro ATMs. And an important thing addressed to the users that there are no service charges levied on the transactions done by this micro electronic device.
Ease of Doing Business
This service slowly has been taken up by the Business Correspondents and they also used in their business to provide better customer experience and to lessen down the efforts of the consumer of carrying cash every time in his pocket to meet his demands round the market. The merchant now faces no hassles in dealing out with liquid money which is accumulated throughout the day in a regular business of a small business owner. Now, merchant disposes accumulated cash easily through this platform. The merchant now achieves cash balancing and his cost is reduced for cash management.
Boon to Post-Demonetization Era
Ever since Modi government has launched demonetization and adopted policies for being ‘Cashless India’ under the flagship Digital India programme, the government has introduced a series of measures to ensure people that they can withdraw and deposit money easily and in that Micro ATM has worked as an effective measure till date. Other methods are USSD (Unstructured Supplementary Service Data, a service that allows mobile banking transactions using basic feature mobile phone where there is no need to have mobile internet data facility for using USSD based mobile banking and it is envisioned to provide financial deepening and inclusion of under banked society in the mainstream banking services and facilities), UPI (Unified Payments Interface, a system that powers multiple bank accounts into a single mobile application (of any collaborating bank), merging several banking features, seamless fund routing & merchant payments into one platform and it also caters to the “Peer to Peer” collect request which can be scheduled and paid as per requirement and convenience and here, each bank provides its own UPI App for Android, Windows and iOS mobile platforms), mobile wallets i.e. to carry cash in digital format where you can easily link your credit/ debit card information in mobile device to mobile wallet application and you can carry out your transfers online to mobile wallet, some of the e-wallets and private companies rocking the platform are Paytm, Freecharge, Mobikwik, Oxigen, mRuppee, Airtel Money, Jio Money, SBI Buddy, itz Cash, Citrus Pay, Vodafone M-Pesa, Axis Bank Lime, ICICI Pockets, SpeedPay and etc) and many more.
