Oxigen introduces India’s first portable ATM for rural areas

Electronic payment solutions provider Oxigen has tied up with Telepower, China, to design and develop India's first mini ATM - a GPRS point of sale business terminal, with its own proprietary software.

The mini ATM, named `OxiShaan', will enable even the smallest of small mom and pop shops or kirana stores to become a customer touch point for ATM like banking services, the company said in a release.

The OxiShaan mini ATM PoS terminal is especially designed for rural deployment, and has the functionality of a phone, GPRS connectivity, printer and battery back-up to combat power failures, the release said.

The mini ATM can be used for a variety of uses, including merchant payments and mini-ATM services.

Oxigen plans to add over 2,50,000 PoS enabled mini-ATMs in the next three years, which, it said, would be a ''game changer'' in the electronic payment space, bringing banking and electronic payments to the doorstep of even the remotest villages.

OxiShaan is also aligned to enable government disbursement plans like NREGA, pensions, subsidies etc, which are to be disbursed only through bank accounts.

Oxygen, already a business correspondent to the State Bank of India, has already proven its capability to deliver government payments by opening over 100,000 pension accounts, in remote village locations in Tamil Nadu. This, the company says, has provided immense benefit and convenience to the old age pensioners.

According to Oxigen chairman Pramod Saxena, besides the cash-in and cash-out facilities, `OxiShaan' will also have the advantage of paying for utility services like mobile recharges, DTH recharges, merchant payments etc, at one single point.

''Very soon a large number of Oxigen's 1,00,000 retail touch points, that continue to grow by the day, will provide ATM and government payment services to India's underserved poor,'' he said.

"We are proud to associate with Oxigen, India's premium payment solution provider, to produce a PoS business device. We have worked with Oxigen over the past one year, and our joint efforts will bear fruit now. As Telepower's mission is to integrate intelligence to make communication smooth, we know that `OxiShaan', will be a great success. We wish Oxigen achieves it goal of providing rural India, all their services, at a single one stop shop, with a smart connectivity device like OxiShaan," He Zhiming, CEO of Telepower, China, added.

The special features of this ATM are:

• Process Oxigen services business transactions like mobile and DTH recharge bill payments etc.
  
• Battery backup, that makes ATM functional even during power cuts
  
• Process ATM services like cash-out, even from banked wallets and IMPS and cash-in through IMPS
  
• Capability to send and receive SMS based transactions, even when GPRS is not working for any reason.
  
• Can make merchant payment through IMPS

Oxigen Services India Pvt Ltd aggregates and distributes a plethora of prepaid services like mobile recharge, bill payments, ticketing and subscriptions for all leading telecom operators, direct-to-home TV operators, internet broadband service providers, railways/ airlines/bus/movie ticketing, bill payments for utilities, insurance and a large bouquet of banking services on a single platform.

Oxigen has a retail footprint of 100,000 outlets and has 30 million transactions per month. Oxigen has joint hands with SBI for enablement of kiosk banking at Oxigen outlets and Yes Money for money transfer services.

Oxigen is also the technology providers for India's first Full Service eWallet from State Bank of India called MobiCash, with cash-in/out, peer to peer, wallet to any bank, merchant payments as well, and has also as partnered to ensure market availability of MobiCash at Oxigen retail.