CHENNAI, April 24, 2015 : Soon, Chennai residents can use postal ATMs to withdraw money not only from their postal savings account, but from any bank account.
This will be possible once the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) accepts the proposal to have postal Automated Teller Machines (ATM) interoperable where postal customers could use debit cards of other banks. Earlier this week, the Department of Posts opened two more ATMs at St. Thomas Mount and Mylapore post offices. The first postal ATM was opened in T. Nagar post office last year.
Anna Road head post
office and Tambaram post office will also have ATM facilities . In three
months, the department plans to expand its ATM services to over 17 post
offices, including those in Park Town, Avadi and Ambattur.
Officials of the Postal
Department said once the ATMs are operational for a few months, RBI is
expected to approve the proposal to allow postal account holders to use
debit cards of other banks as well and vice versa.
As of now, only 50
postal account holders have debit cards. “With more ATMs being added, we
are speeding up the process to issue personalised debit cards. At
present, customers can get insta cards that will allow them to use ATMs
till they get their debit cards,” said Mervin Alexander, Postmaster
General (Chennai city region).
It takes about 3-4 weeks
to get a postal debit card. The department plans to distribute about
2,500 cards soon, particularly to pensioners. While applications are
being accepted for obtaining debit cards, customers can immediately get
insta cards to carry out transactions.
Nearly 31.22 lakh postal
saving account holders of Chennai city region would be able to use
postal debit cards in any of the post offices networked with core
banking solutions. Customers could soon avoid visits to post offices to
carry out savings account transactions as e-post office and mobile
banking facility are on the anvil.
