ATMs installed by state-owned banks will soon have the facility for issuing the transaction receipt in Hindi, finance minister Arun Jaitley said on Friday in response to a question in the Lok Sabha.

 

"The government has instructed public sector banks (PSBs) to install those ATM machines which can produce receipts in both Hindi and English languages. PSBs have been advised to ensure that all ATM machines have facility of doing transactions/printing in Hindi as well as in English. However, no time frame has been prescribed for installation of such ATM machines," the written statement said.

 

Most ATMs have a bilingual option on their home screens. Some machines, like those installed by ICICI Bank, offer a regional language option as well in non-Hindi speaking states.

"We have already installed machines that print receipts in Hindi for some of our customer banks and several machines have already been deployed. Some of our customers have deployed multi-lingual machines that can print in other languages such as Kannada or Marathi," said Ashok Shankar, solution deployment manager at NCR - one of the largest ATM manufacturers in the world.

Shankar added that to make all machines compliant with the bilingual requirement, only a small software change is required. "

Existing thermal printers are capable of printing in any language," he said. He said that, depending on the machine, some of the changes can be made remotely. Incidentally, it was the home ministry that pointed out the discrepancy where even when transactions were done in Hindi, the receipt was printed out in English. The home ministry had raised the issue with the finance ministry and RBI. (Times of India)