Euronet India Chosen to Implement Indias National Financial Switch

IDRBT selected Euronet to provide the two-part turnkey solution for the NFS, which will create a neutral platform that enables banks to connect their own switches to the NFS. The NFS will contain both an integrated inter-ATM switch and an Internet and e-commerce payment gateway, which will act as an e-commerce facilitator to authenticate and route payment details between banks and various parties. This two-part solution is believed to be the first of its kind at a national infrastructure level. The NFS will be a major step in building the financial infrastructure to allow connectivity for participating banks ATMs and increase convenience for customers to get cash anytime, anywhere. In many countries, national switches are developed and run by the countrys central bank to ensure that all local banks can participate in electronic payments. The installed base of ATMs in India is estimated to be over 15,000 units and this number of ATMs has been growing at over 50% for the last three years. New private banks have been the biggest deployers and more recently public sector banks and old private banks are implementing aggressive plans to install ATMs. Euronet operates a shared Indian ATM network, called Cashnet that includes nine member banks. These banks are connected with more than 3,000 ATMs serving over 9 million cardholders across 250 cities in India.