Bharat Electronics Ltd (BEL), one of the major players in defence electronics has announced its foray into manufacturing micro ATMs and citizen verification devices (CVDs). The USP of BEL micro ATMs will be that it can facilitate low-cost payment platform for all types of card transactions using a magnetic strip card or contact and contactless chip card.
Talking about CVDs, SK Sharma, chairman, BEL said that the Registrar General of India has asked them to provide a device with a special application software for door-to-door census collection required for government schemes. CVD is basically a customised tablet PC.
According to V. Mahesh, a senior BEL staffer who is overseeing their production says that a banking professional carrying cash can separately execute banking operations in remote locations facilitated by the BEL Micro ATMs.
He also said that nearly 5,00,000 micro ATMs will be required in the next two to three years as central government is directing state governments to deploy such solutions.
According to a company statement the micro ATM supports Aadhaar based finger print verification. Online transaction is supported using GSM, PSTN and ethernet connection and location information is supported by built-in GPS. Cash handling is done manually by bank representatives after the online transaction is completed.
By Atanu Kumar Das
