ICICI Venture has picked up a strategic stake in BTI Payments, an ATM management company and a subsidiary of Banktech Group, Australia, for Rs 140 crore, reports Times of India. The investment was made in conjunction with the Banktech's Rs 110-crore investment in the business to set up White Label ATMs (WLA) in India. The Australian company operates ATM and POS terminals in Australia, India, Hong Kong, New Zealand and United Arab Emirates and has recently established offices in Shanghai, China. BTI Payments will now roll out over 10,000 WLAs in India over the next four years. RBI had recently opened up the business of ATMs to private companies and had mandated that these white label operators should install at least 9,000 ATMs. Currently, BTI Payments owns and operates more than 500 ATMs and 6,500 POS terminals for various banks such as Catholic Syrian Bank, Federal Bank, Indian Overseas Bank, Lakshmi Vilas Bank and Syndicate Bank. However, it needs to be noted that these are not white label services and the BTI Payments is yet to roll out its WLA network in India. The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has allowed an ATM interchange fee of Rs 15 for cash withdrawal and Rs 5 for non-cash transactions. White label operators will have to incur an additional cost of interest on the funds stashed in their machine according to the report. Last week, Japanese electronics conglomerate Hitachi had acquired BTI Payment's competitor Chennai-based Prizm Payments Services by entering into a share transfer agreement with all the company shareholders including Winvest Holdings…
