ECS' Electra Enables SBI's ATM Network Expansion

ElectraCard Services (ECS), an electronic payments solution provider, announced accomplishment of a big milestone with State Bank of India (SBI) with over 10,000 ATMs and Kiosks and processing 10 million transactions on a single day on electra platform. SBI, with the largest ATM network in India, had selected ElectraCard Services’ electra payment platform to strengthen and support its plans to significantly grow its ATM and Debit Card base. The SBI has plans to increase its network to 60,000 ATMs in the near future, and already has over 50 Million debit cards on electra platform – making it one of the largest payments EFT switch installation in the world. Bank is rolling out all new cards and ATMs on electra platform.

Transaction volumes have increased as SBI consolidated its entire acquiring business for domestic and international card networks resulting in significant cost savings. electraSWITCH at SBI is one of the first active - active implementation in the region providing continuous transaction processing services for their customers.

SBI has leveraged other ECS solutions from the electra suite as well. These include ECS’s Internet payment gateway and 3-D secure authentication software for SBI’s ecommerce acquiring needs. Since the implementation of the electra suite, SBI has also launched several value added services including ‘Green Channel Counter’ at its branches to do away with queues and to introduce paperless banking. At these counters, instead of a bank executive you get a hand-held swipe machine linked to a computer and can be handled by customers themselves for depositing/withdrawing cash, fund transfers and for dispensing pay-in slips and withdrawal forms.

Ashok Kumar, VP at ECS said, “When SBI chose the electra suite they were looking for a powerful and flexible payments platform with the capability to adapt products to markets while coping with rapid growth in processing volumes. We’re delighted that SBI’s Implementation of our products has enabled them to achieve such business success in this area.”

The State Bank of India is the largest banking and financial services company in India when ranked by revenue, assets and market capitalisation. The majority owner of the bank is the government of India. It operates more than 19,000 branches in India and has operations in 32 countries around the globe. The State Bank of India has assets totalling US$370 billion and was ranked No. 292 in the 2011 Fortune Global 500 list.