Some interesting stats about Indian banking, that surprised me at first.

SURBHI GOEL TIMES NEWS NETWORK[ FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2006 02:31:25 AM]

Standing in a queue, waiting for the teller to give your withdrawal money or moving from one counter to another to deposit cash is a tale of the good old days. Now ‘Your Bank’ has reached you at your fingertip. Core banking systems and e-banking have enabled customers to interact and transact with banks seamlessly. Globally, about 10% of the customers regularly do online banking. In India, less than 1% of the millions of customers are using Internet banking and the trend is catching up, albeit slowly.

Source: Banks on people.connect via Net route- The Economic Times

This is just a dump of useful information for reference.

At present, there are more than 15,000 ATMs in India that give customers the comfort of anytime money. According to sources, the overall IT spend of a bank is around Rs 300-500 crore. “Within the next 10 years, we foresee 15-20% cost saving in transactions because of the advancement and IT adoption,” says Kalyan Sunder, general manager, IT, Bank of India.
He further adds that within 5-6 years, Bank of India would increase its customers from 25 million to 40 million. Though the number of people, using Internet banking may appear to be small yet it holds good potential.
“At present, 1.3 million users are connected through online banking. About 12-13% of our daily transactions are online,” says Pravir Vohra, general manager, IT, ICICI Bank, the largest private sector bank in
the country.

The benefits of IT in banking are going to the villages and small towns as well. As more and more technology is penetrating rural areas, rural banking is taking a new turn. “We have tied-up with BSNL and VSNL to provide better connectivity via phone banking. We also give special Kissan debit cards”, says SK Sharma, deputy general manager, Oriental Bank of Commerce.

There are other services like rural mobile ATMs and kiosks that are helping villagers. Moreover, with the help new tools like biometrics, voice activation and thumb impression technology, banks are optimistic about providing better facilities to farmers. “We are coming up with the concept of smart cards for farmers. We are also in line to devise services that are both offline and online to make the process of e-banking more farmer-friendly,” adds Mr Vohra of ICICI Bank.

And last point, cheque truncation is coming too.

Soon the Reserve Bank of India will come up with the pilot project — Cheque Truncation solution — that would replace paper-based cheque clearing enabling seamless transition to a secure image based cheque clearing system. Get ready for even more tech savvy banking in the coming months.