Muthoot Finance Ltd, India's largest gold financing company, has launched its first white label automated teller machine (ATM) at Maradu in Kochi on Thursday.
Apart from basic ATM service of cash withdrawal & balance enquiry, account to account transfer, prepaid card top-up, etc, Muthoot Finance plans to introduce loyalty programmes. These include exclusive counters at select centres with ATM facility along with other services such as money transfer, foreign exchange, air ticketing, bill payments, etc. It will also provide a 24X7 video interactive facility and TV screen with information for customer education at the ATM sites.
FIS Payment Solutions & Services India is the technical partner and Federal Bank Ltd is the sponsor bank for the project.
In June 2012, RBI had issued policy guidelines permitting non-banking entities to set up and operate white label ATMs in the country. Earlier, only banks could set up and run ATMs. In January this year Muthoot Finance Ltd received the authorisation from RBI to set up white label ATMs.
“We have gone an extra mile by challenging ourselves to set up 9,000 WLAs within three years with first 100 ATMs in March itself," George Alexander Muthoot, managing director, Muthoot Finance, said.
He added that Muthoot Finance would see about 1,000 white label ATMs in the first year itself, followed by 2,000 in the second year and a significant ramp up with 6,000 ATMs in the third year.
Muthoot Finance is the flagship company of the Muthoot group, which is also into hospitality, healthcare, media, education, information technology, foreign exchange, insurance distribution, and money transfer businesses.
(Edited by Joby Puthuparampil Johnson)
