White label operator, India1Payments, to double the number of ATMs to 25,000 in 4-5 years
India1Payments Ltd, the country’s largest ATM operator, is looking to double the number of ATMs to approximately 25,000 in the next four to five years by penetrating deeper into some of the existing and new markets it has added. It currently has around 12,500 ATMs operating largely in the southern and central part of India including Bihar, West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh.
The company, which recorded a growth of 30-35 per cent in its turnover, ended 2022-23 with a revenue of around INR 560 crore. It is hoped that the growth rate will be maintained on the back of introducing more ATMs, given the low penetration of machines in semi-urban and rural areas.
ATM hacking
According to K Srinivas, Managing Director and CEO of India1Payments, ATM penetration in the country is very low compared to not only developed countries but also some developing countries. With approximately 2,60,000 ATMs, India currently has about a quarter of the number of ATMs in the United States.
A large part of these ATMs are located in Tier I and Tier II cities. Of these, approximately 36,000 are operated by white card operators, which is approximately 13-14 percent of the total number of ATMs in the country. But when it comes to semi-urban and rural areas, the share of white label ATMs is higher around 25 percent which means that one in four ATMs in semi-urban and rural areas contributes to white label operation. Moreover, 80 percent of additional deployments have already come from WLA operators.
“Currently we have around 12,500 ATMs across the country, and 90 percent of our ATMs are in Tier III, IV, V and VI cities. These are mainly semi-urban and rural areas. We consciously decided not to go to cities,” Srinivas said. the grand Business line.
Although the per capita income in urban markets is higher than in rural areas, the density of ATMs is more in urban areas than in rural areas. So the average swipe card size is not much different between urban and rural areas, he said, showing how profitable it is to deploy the machines in these markets.
Need more
We think the country needs anywhere around 400,000 ATMs. We’re currently still at about 260,000, and obviously a good portion of that has to be in the semi-urban and rural areas, especially in the Indian belt and the northeastern and eastern states. We are committed to that.
India1Payments, which was planning to go public, has put plans on hold as the markets don’t look very “favourable” at the moment.
“We’re a private equity funded company, and when we decided to go public at the time, it was mostly to grant some partial shareholder exit. We were making enough cash to put our ATMs up. So the IPO was basically planned as a secondary sale. .But then there was a little bit of turbulence in the markets, and now we weren’t kind of desperate to go (go public) and shareholders were completely pleased with the way we were going,” he said.
He added that there is no specific time frame for the IPO yet and the board of directors and shareholders will discuss when and what is the appropriate time.