The much awaited hightech cheque truncation exercise is likely to be launched officially by the end of December.
Initially, ten banks would be joining this high-tech facility, more banks are likely to join the bandwagon soon thereafter.
Talking to FE on the sidelines of second annual Banktech Congress in Mumbai on Tuesday, KS Bajwa, general manager, operations, payment and settlement division, Punjab National Bank, said, ?On completion of the pilot project on cheque truncation process on December 21, we are all set to officially launch the facility across the country on December 27.? Ten banks have already given their nod for joining the process.
This includes Punjab National Bank (PNB), State Bank of India (SBI), GM, Bank of India (BoI), Indian Bank, ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, American Express and Karur Vysya Bank. However, Bajwa maintained that other banks would be free to join us anytime after the launch.
As per the Reserve Bank of India, cheque truncation is a system of cheque clearing and settlement between banks based on electronic data or images or both without physical exchange of instrument.
On implementation of core banking solution (CBS) in his bank, Bajwa said that so far more than 3,000 of our branches have already connected with CBS and I hope all the 4,500 branches we have will soon covered under it.
Similarly, the bank was planning to add another 1,200 ATMs in addition to the prevailing 1,500 ATMs.
Bajwa informed that bank was under the process installing 17 ATMs at various stations of the Delhi Metro in New Delhi.
Also, Bajwa informed that his bank likely to set up its data warehouse national capital region (NCR) somewhere in 2008.
Asked if the ongoing information technology process will retrench the staff, Bajwa said, ?It is the other round as we are recruiting more more bank staff now particular sectors like IT, industry and agriculture.?