Select petrol pumps to dispense cash up to Rs 2,000
10:00PM Thu 17 Nov, 2016
NEW DELHI: Now, you need not queue up at a bank for your daily cash. You can simply walk into a petrol pump run by state-run oil companies and get up to Rs 2,000 by swiping your debit card where POS machines are available.
Initially though, the facility would be available at 2,500 petrol pumps across the country that have card swipe machines from State Bank of India, the country's largest bank. Over the next three days, the facility would be extended to 20,000 outlets that have card swipe machines from HDFC Bank, CitiBank and ICICI Bank.
The move, initially suggested by the All India Petroleum Dealers Association, is part of the government's efforts to ease the rush for new currency notes at bank branches and functional ATMs (cash dispensing machines) following withdrawal of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 bills and sealing of cash machines on November 9.
The details of allowing petrol pumps to dispense cash were worked out on Thursday at a meeting between senior executives of Indian Oil, Hindustan Petroleum and Bharat Petroleum and SBI chief Arundhati Bhattacharya in Mumbai.
"We are very happy that the government has accepted our proposal. We wrote to the Prime Minister on November 14 to apprise him of the situation at petrol pumps and our willingness to help mitigate people's cash woes. We have never shied away from serving any national cause. We are happy to assist the government in its fight against black money and terror funding," AIPDA president Ajay Bansal told TOI.
"Our pump attendants are as good as, if not better than, bank tellers when it comes to handling cash. In banks they have to make several entries. At petrol pumps, we will swipe and once the transaction is cleared, hand over the money. So it will be quicker and people can come to get cash even after work," Bansal said.
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