BTI Payments has inked a seven year strategic partnership with IBM in a move to overhaul its IT infrastructure.

India’s fastest growing white label ATM operator, BTI Payments Private Ltd, has inked a seven year strategic partnership with IBM in a move to overhaul its IT infrastructure.

Currently, BTI Payments runs over 3000 India1 branded white label ATMs in Australia, India, Hong Kong, New Zealand and the United Arab Emirates.

As part of the agreement, BTI Payments will now leverage IBM’s managed services solution to deploy a further 4000 ATMs in India.

IBM in turn will manage, monitor and maintain the ATM infrastructure, including feasibility, supply and installation, performance monitoring, availability management, reporting and analysis.

The partnership is expected to help BTI Payments scale technology deployment more efficiently across shorter timeframes and improve overall customer experience, thereby giving the company greater visibility and control over its operations.

Sanjay Khare, Country Manager of Technical Support Services, GTS, for IBM in India and South Asia, said the strategic relationship will allow BTI Payments to focus more on their core business by gaining “instant access” to national infrastructure support and greater automation of its IT operations.

BTI Payments’ Managing Director, K. Srinivas, said that the company was committed to supporting the Indian government’s initiative of serving the nation’s “rural under banked’ population”.

“With technology being the core of financial services business, we needed a strategic partner like IBM with proven service management expertise in the financial sector”, Srinivas said.

“This strategic tie-up with IBM will help us build a robust and resilient ATM infrastructure providing improved availability through centralised monitoring, thus enabling us to scale operations and build an agile technology environment.”

According to IBM, 60 per cent of India’s rural population currently does not have access to formal banking and financial services, with financial inclusion seen as “a key government policy imperative” for the country.  

With BTI Payments looking to drive ATM penetration in rural India, the company is hoping to have over 9000 ATMs deployed by March, 2017.