Cash Crunch sees longer waiting times at ATMS

The Asian Age.

Business, In Other News

Mumbai still has the longest wait times at ATMs while Chennai has the shortest.

CashNoCash, an initiative by Quikr, launched a fortnight ago to help people find cashpoints nearest to them. (Photo: AP)

Mumbai: The cash crunch is worsening across India as the wait times at ATMs for withdrawing cash have increased over the last week averaging at 50 minutes.

Mumbai still has the longest wait times at ATMs while Chennai has the shortest. Whilst the RBI has said that it is putting more cash into the system, it is still nowhere near the trillions of rupees it sucked out of the system.

CashNoCash, an initiative by Quikr, launched a fortnight ago to help people find cashpoints nearest to them, says that waiting time seems to peak in the second half of the day and there are longer queues.

Quikr found that about 60 per cent of the ATMs have reported cash availability, of which, 50 per cent of the ATMs which cash also had wait times.

The cash availability was found in only 40 per cent of ATMs in Chennai, Mumbai and Delhi. Bangalore reported no cash in about 30 per cent of the ATMs closely followed by Delhi and Chennai while 70 per cent of the ATMs reported with cash availability at least once a day, but they run out of cash quickly.

Quikr said the initiative has helped citizens as over 11 million users are using this facility, a majority of them from Delhi, Pune, Chennai, Bangalore and Mumbai.

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