Hyderabad, June 26: Planning to withdraw money from ATM? You may have to withdraw not less than Rs 500. The reason: shortage of Rs 100 notes.
Of late, ATMs of some banks, especially those belonging to the public sector, have been running out of Rs 100 notes, causing inconvenience to customers who wish to withdraw less than Rs 500 or Rs 1,000.
The boards displaying ‘No Rs 100 notes’ have become a common sight at ATMs of many banks including State Bank of India, its associate banks and Andhra Bank, while it is a sporadic phenomena at private sector banks’ ATMs.
“This is very troublesome as one can withdraw money from any bank’s ATM without paying any charges. Students and those in rural areas who generally withdraw in lower denominations are hit by this,” Mr Purshottam Reddy, an engineering student at Osmania University, told Business Line near an ATM of Andhra Bank here.
Increased transactions
The reason for the paucity appears to be increased transactions at ATMs in the last two months after the free ATM usage across banks came into force on April 1. With faster cash outages caused by higher traffic from non-customers, banks appear to be stocking more notes of Rs 500 denomination and less of Rs 100 denomination.
“There is a perceptible increase in ATM withdrawals in the last two months. This might result in shortage of Rs 100 notes in a machine,” a senior Andhra Bank official said. The central bank’s clean note policy is also adding to the shortage, he added.
While SBI officials were not available for comment, a State Bank of Hyderabad official said the increase in ATM withdrawals “could lead to shortage of small denominations notes”.
“We are yet to tabulate the data on increase in ATM transactions since April. There may be some shortage of Rs 100 notes in rural areas but we don’t have any problem in urban localities,” he added.
Pvt banks better off
The private banks, however, are able to manage the situation better. Observing that there is an increase in transactions, an ICICI Bank official said the bank had taken special measures to ensure availability of cash in all denominations in its over 4,500 ATMs.
“We keep track of average transactions in every ATM and load one-and-half times more cash,” he explained.
An official of HDFC Bank said there was no shortage of any denominations at its ATMs.
–Agencies