Cardless Cash Withdrawal Technology in India: How does it work?

Ashish M. Shaji

20 Nov, 2020

Banks are continually looking to innovate and provide the best customer experience to their customers. In the process, they have come to a stage where you don’t require a debit or a credit card to withdraw money. The cardless cash technology allows you to do this. In this article, we shall have a detailed understanding of this.

An Overview of Cardless technology

With the Covid-19 pandemic induced crisis, people are increasingly concerned about their health, but daily businesses of life cannot be put on hold indefinitely. Therefore people step out of their houses to buy essential items that require cash and ATM being a public place; you won’t want to touch a machine that is used by many.

Banks have made many of its services convenient to people, and now withdrawing money has been made convenient, and people can withdraw money without the use of credit or debit cards. A number of banks offer this service. SBI’s yono app allows customers to withdraw money without a debit card. Banks such as ICICI and Axis bank provide this facility to make cash withdrawal without the use of cards.

Cardless Cash Withdrawal facility by Kotak Bank

With a view to making banking experience smooth and hassle-free, the Kotak Mahindra Bank^[1] launched this withdrawal facility without the use of cash through ATMs. Apart from withdrawing cash, customers also can send money to others across the country through this unique instant money transfer facility, and the receiver of the money does not need to have a Kotak Mahindra Bank account to withdraw money sent through this facility.

As per Puneet Kapoor ( President- Products, Alternate Channels, Customer Experience Delivery, Kotak Mahindra Bank), this cash withdrawal facility without the use of cash is simple, secure, and convenient to use and relieves customers from carrying debit cards wherever they go. He further said that in a country as diverse as India, cash is still important and plays a crucial role, and the facility will enable the customers of the Kotak bank to seamlessly remit cash to their friends, families, and others. 

How does this cardless cash withdrawal facility work? (Example- Kotak Mahindra Bank)

To give you an understanding of how this facility works, we bring you the step by step process.

In this instance, we have taken the example of Kotak Mahindra Bank.

• For using this cash withdrawal facility through ATMs, the user must log in to Kotak net banking or the mobile banking app.
• Customers should then register the beneficiary’s name, mobile number, and address. The registration of the beneficiary is a one time process.
• The customers of Kotak Mahindra Bank can include their own name and details for the self withdrawal facility. 
• Once the beneficiary is registered successfully, an instant money transfer can be initiated through net banking or by mobile banking by entering the amount to be remitted and setting a senders code.
• Once it is done, the beneficiary can withdraw cash from any Kotak bank ATM in India by simply opting for cardless cash withdrawal or instant money transfer displayed on the ATM screen.
• The beneficiary would then be able to withdraw money by entering their mobile number, sender, and SMS codes, and the cash amount.
• As stated earlier, the beneficiary doesn’t have to be a customer of Kotak Mahindra Bank in order to receive money through an instant money transfer option. The Kotak Mahindra Bank also provides the option to beneficiaries to withdraw money from any ATMs of Kotak Mahindra Bank without any bank accounts.

What are the advantages of the Cardless Cash Withdrawal facility?

There are advantages for both customers initiating this service and for the beneficiary receiving the funds through this facility.

These advantages are mentioned below:

• Fund transfer through this facility is easy and convenient, and especially considering the health concerns of people due to the current pandemic, there are more reasons to use this facility.
• In the case where you are in urgent need of cash, but you don’t find your ATM, then this facility can come to your rescue.
• With this facility, customers initiating this service can send cash anytime 24*7, including on holidays.
•  The most distinguishing feature or to say the biggest advantage of this facility is that the recipient, i.e., the beneficiary receiving the funds, are not required to have any bank account.
• This facility provides a safe and secure mode of cash transfer, and more and more banks are adopting this.
• It reduces at least one chance of fraud that is the card skimming method adopted by criminals to steal the information from the card.

Conclusion

Read our article:Reasons for implementing the Digital Banking