NEW DELHI:
At least 76 Automated Teller Machines (ATM) have been shut down in Meghalaya in the last three months, government data revealed on February 10.
According to the government statistics in possession of The Meghalayan, the state had 439 ATMs till September last year which came down to 363 as of January, 2022, reason for which has been attributed to promoting other modes of transactions.
“As banks are focusing on digital banking the number of ATMs has decreased. Moreover, third party ATM running is also too expensive which increases costs for banks,” an official said.
Interestingly, while the number functional ATMs have decreased in Meghalaya, other states in the Northeast have witnessed a steep increase in their numbers during the same period.
Assam which had 4280 ATMs in September 2021, now has about 18128 ATMs, similarly other states like Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland, and Tripura too have seen an expansion in the number of functional ATMs during the period, which shows that banks may have other reasons as well for the closure of the cash dispensing machines in Meghalaya.
Speaking in the Lok Sabha, Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology, Rajeev Chandrasekhar said that the Central Government is making all efforts for promotion of digital payments and enabling digital payment acceptance infrastructure across the country including North Eastern Region.
He said that as a result of this, Northeastern states have witnessed a massive increase in digital transactions including payment through Unified Payments Interface (BHIM-UPI), RuPay on point of sale (PoS) devices, Immediate Payment Service (IMPS), and *99# (Unstructured Supplementary Services Data (USSD) based digital payment mode).