Demonetisation effect: Growth nearly halved for India's top ATM manufacturer

Demonetisation lowered annual growth for ATM manufacturer and service provider NCR Corporation from about 15-16 percent to 8-9 percent.

Launching new features on an ATM to provide integrated core banking solutions, the US-based ATM operator's India Managing Director, Navroz Dastur said, "We have a growth of about 8-9 percent currently while prior to demonetisation it was 15-16 percent. Cash supply shortages have reduced the need for deployment of more ATMs by banks."

NCR Corp., which has a 49 percent market share in India with over 1.06 lakh ATMs, deployed about 16,000 - 17,000 ATMs in 2016-17 while during a growth of 15-16 percent, the shipment would be around 25,000 units.

Dastur said that the cash shortages at ATMs still existed in regions like Andhra Pradesh and that the cash demand did not match the supply especially the 100 and 500 rupee currency notes as 2000 rupee notes are not much in demand.

The supply shortages could be due to banks requiring more cash at branches, which will be preferred over ATMs. Also, there are lot of digital transactions that are taking place, Dastur said on the sidelines.

The Reserve Bank of India recently informed that nearly 83 percent of the currency has been remonetised denying any shortage of cash in the system.

On November 9, the Government decided to invalidate old 500 and 1000 rupee currency notes, which sucked out almost 87 percent of the currency in circulation.

ATMs in many cities have been running out of cash since then and customers are still going without cash.

Dastur expects the growth to return in a few quarters with cash coming back into the ATMs.