State Bank of India has said its ATM operations are running at a loss and as such it is in favor of charging a fee on customers for the transactions. The bank’s chairperson Arundhati Bhattacharya said there is need for a commercially viable model for ATM network expansion and the bank cannot afford to lose month after month. SBI has the largest ATM network in the country but Bhattacharya says barring in a few states, the ATM operations are making losses. She said the bank is in favor of charging its own customers for the use of SBI ATMs. The bank has a network of 32,777 ATMs as of September 2013 and it has announced aggressive plans of expansion.
