Euronet Worldwide is looking at making India the processing hub for its Asia- Pacific operations. Euronet operates in the country through its 100 per cent subsidiary Euronet Services India.
The company is focused on financial transaction processing and operates the largest independent pan-European ATM network of around 2,000 ATMs.
In India, Euronet operates an ATM network under the brand 'Cashnet' with IDBI Bank as the settlement bank. Citibank, Standard Chartered Bank and UTI Bank are the other member banks.
Other than India, in Asia Pacific, the company has operations in Australia, New Zealand and Indonesia.
"We want to expand the ATM switch in India to cater to the processing and monitoring operations in the other Asia Pacific region. Instead of duplicating the infrastructure in each of the countries we can run the operations seamlessly through India as is being done in Europe. There will be a hub in each country to which the bank, mobile operators and others connect too," says Loney Antony, managing director, Euronet Services India.
In Europe, Budapest caters to 14 countries across the region, where Euronet runs has 4000 ATMs, of which 2000 are owned and operated by the company.
"The key for us is to build up volumes to reduce transaction processing cost. We would b able to offer transactions at a cheaper rate. The plan to operationalise India would kick off in the next six to nine months," said Antony.
Euronet has invested $2 million in India and the total investment plan for the country in the first couple of years is $5 million.
Its Cashnet ATM network is the only live ATM network in the country. There are three other multilateral ATM networks other than Cashnet-Bank of India's Cashtree, PNB's Mitr and Canara Bank's CashOnline.
Meanwhile other banks are also in the process of joining the Cashnet network. Sources said that Corporation Bank, Bank of Punjab, Centurion Bank and Development Credit Bank are also likely to join the network which would take the total number of ATMs in the network to around 2,500.
The company is also processing around 1,000 mobile top-ups per day.
"We are looking at one million transactions a month by March. We have already tied up with Hutch and AirTel nationally," added Antony. Euronet processes 20 million transactions every month in Europe.
