Diebold Inc is a global leader in providing card-based transaction systems, security and service solutions to the financial, education and healthcare industries.

The company had taken over the financial self-service assets and related development activities of Amsterdam based Getronics NV and Groupe Bull for approximately $160 million in cash last month. With this acquisition Diebold Inc will become the second largest provider of financial self-service solutions in Europe.

Diebold HMA was established in 1988 as a distributor for Diebold for retail banking products like ATMs and Security Systems. Diebold HMA has an ATM manufacturing centre in Pondicherry with a capacity of 80-100 machines a month. It has a 60 per cent market share.

Talking to the media after the inauguration of an ATM display and software solutions centre here, Diebold Inc President and Chief Executive Officer Walden O'Dell said that considerable amount of software requirements for Diebold was being generated from India. This is going to be substantially increased in the near future.

The launch of the country's first ATM display and software solutions centre was in line with Diebold's focus on modularity and upgradability for customers. Diebold Inc has a number of technologies on hand - web enabling ATMs, using Iris technology for customer identification, facial scans etc which could be customised upon banks' requirements.

The Indian company is, however, awaiting security clearance issues from the government before any of these ATM technologies can take off in a big way. Meanwhile, the market in India was growing at a rate of 100 per cent for ATMs and there would be no slacking in pace for the next couple of years, Diebold HMA Managing Director Harish K Murthi said. Since inception of the first shared ATM network the market has grown by more than 300 ATMs per year. With community Internet centres soon to become a reality in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, a similar shared ATM network (available in Mumbai) could become operational here, he said.

The Internet kiosks would be an additional market driver with ATM booths attached to them. By 2000, it is expected that there would be 2000 ATMs installed in the country with Diebold HMA's share being 800 machines. The new centre would further help explore cross-sell opportunities such as multimedia dispensing, printing coupons with logos and graphics, letter quality document printing, image document processing etc. Diebold HMA would also look at wireless connectivity for web enabling.