VIJAYAWADA: The Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) are no longer confined to banks, as India Post has come out with its own ATMs. The first such ATM in Andhra Pradesh was inaugurated in Vijayawada at the Head Post Office on Friday. Now, the postal department’s savings bank customers can withdraw their money and check balance, without the bother of long queues at post offices.
To make the postal department fully updated about the latest technology and adapt the same in order to provide user-friendly and hassle-free services to the customers, the postal department has initiated various modernisation programmes.
“In both Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, there are 95 head post offices out of which, we started the ATM first at Vijayawada and it will be followed by Hyderabad, Secunderabad, Jubilee Hills and Kurnool head post offices in the next 10 days,” said chief postmaster general BV Sudhakar, after inaugurating the first savings bank ATM.
The ATMs were integrated under the Core Banking Solutions (CBS) and all the remaining head post offices in the state would be equipped with ATMs by March, 2016. The CBS was a centrally integrated system which allowed the customers to make transactions at any post office in the country, he added.
Revealing the targets set by the postal department for 2015-16, Sudhakar said that the revenue target for 2014-15 was `1,166 crore and they had achieved `1,271 through the implementation of various schemes like Sunayasam, cash-point service, My Stamp. The deficit was also reduced from `381 crore in 2012-13 to `121 crore in 2014-15, he said and expressed the confidence that it would be brought down to zero by March 2016.
“We have entered into an agreement with the government of Andhra Pradesh for distribution of 9,000 tonnes of textbooks from the district headquarters to mandals in all districts across Andhra Pradesh with an expected revenue of `1.1 crore. To make the services more user-friendly to the customers, we are using the modern technology,” he concluded.