Concerned over the inconvenience brought on to the general public because of the non-availability of cash in ATMs, the Reserve Bank has determined to penalise banks for failure to well-timed top off forex notes in such machines. The RBI will begin implementing penalties on banks in case the ATMs continue to be out-of-cash for a complete duration of 10 hours in a month from October 1, 2021, onwards.
“The Scheme of Penalty for non-replenishment of ATMs has been formulated to make certain that enough cash is to be had to the general public via ATMs,” the RBI stated in a circular.
The Reserve Bank of India has a mandate to problem banknotes and the banks are satisfying this mandate through meeting out banknotes to the general public via their extensive community of branches and ATMs.
In this connection, it stated an evaluation of downtime of ATMs because of cash-outs changed into undertaken and it changed into found that ATM operations laid low with cash-outs result in non-availability of cash and purpose avoidable inconvenience to the contributors of the general public.
It has, therefore, been determined that the banks/ White Label ATM Operators (WLAOs) will give a boost to their systems/ mechanisms to reveal the provision of cash in ATMs and make certain well-timed replenishment to keep away from coins-outs, the significant financial institutions stated.
“Any non-compliance on this regard will be regarded critically and shall appeal to economic penalty as stipulated withinside the ‘Scheme of Penalty for non-replenishment of ATMs’,” the RBI stated.
The Scheme may be powerful from October 01, 2021.
On situation for counting times of coins-outs in an ATM, the RBI stated it'd come into play “while the purchaser isn't always capable of withdrawing cash because of non-availability of cash in a specific ATM”.As regards the quantum of penalty, the significant financial institution stated “cash-out at any ATM of greater than ten hours in a month” will appeal to a flat penalty of Rs 10,000 in step with ATM.
In the case of White Label ATMs (WLAs), the penalty could be charged to the financial institution, that's assembly the cash requirement of that specific WLA.
The financial institution, may, at its discretion, get better the penalty from the WLA operator, it added. At the end-June 2021, there have been 2,13,766 ATMs of various banks withinside the country.