National Financial Switch Product Overview

National Financial Switch (NFS) ATM network having 37 members and connecting about 50,000 ATMs was taken over by NPCI from Institute for Development and Research in Banking Technology (IDRBT) on December 14, 2009. Over the span of few years, NFS ATM network has grown many folds and is now the leading multilateral ATM network in the country. As on 31st December’ 21, there were 1,202 members that includes 110 Direct, 1,045 Sub members, 43 RRBs and 4 WLAOs using NFS network connected to more than 2.54 Lac ATM (including cash deposit machines/recyclers)

NFS has established a strong and sustainable operational model with in-house capabilities and today can be compared at par with other major and well-established switch networks. The operational functions and services are at par with most of the global ATM networks.

Salient Features

• NFS has introduced sub-membership model which enables smaller, regional banks including RRBs and local co-operative banks to participate in the ATM network.
• NFS has maintained high standards of application and network uptime of above 99.50% which has helped our member banks ensure enhanced customer experience.
• The Dispute Management System (DMS), has benefitted members with high operational efficiency and ease of online transaction life cycle management (chargeback, representment, etc.) in the network apart from being compliant with local regulatory requirements.
• NPCI has also tied up with International card schemes like Discover Financial Service (DFS), Japan Credit Bureau (JCB) and China UnionPay International (CUPI) which allows their cardholders to use ATMs connected to NFS network.
• The Fraud Risk Management (FRM) solution is offered as a value added service to monitor transactions (in real time) and to generate alert or decline the transaction in the NFS network

Value Added Services:

Apart from basic transactions like Cash Withdrawal, Balance Enquiry, PIN Change and Mini Statement, NFS also offers other Value Added Services (VAS) on ATMs/CDMs like:

• Interoperable Cash Deposit (ICD)
• Mobile Banking Registration (MBR)
• Card-to-Card Fund Transfer (C2C)
• Cheque Book Request (CBR)
• Statement Request (SR)
• Aadhar Number Seeding (ANS)

Interoperable Cash Deposit (ICD):

• The service enables cardholders of participating member banks to use NFS networked Cash Recyclers/Cash Deposit Machines of participating member banks for depositing cash in their own account or third party account.
• The service is beneficial for banks as well as its customers as it will help banks to optimize cash handling cost and at the same time provide convenience to customers by allowing them to use any participating Bank’s Cash Recycler/Cash Deposit Machine to deposit cash into their own account or any third party account.
• Many Banks have already deployed about 30,000 + Cash Recyclers/Cash Deposit Machines for catering their own customers, which can be enabled for interoperable transactions.
• Interoperability will further help to optimised cash handling cost and earn higher fee income leading to enhance Return on Investment.

Some of the key features of this service are:

• Real time credit to beneficiary account
• Instant verification of notes by cash recycler/cash deposit machine
• Optimize cash handling cost and reduce idle cash in machines
• Limit per Transaction is restricted to less than Rs.50,000/-
• Paperless Transaction

CLICK HERE to know NFS Members Banks live for ICD

Mobile Banking Registration (MBR)

• The service enables cardholders of participating member bank to register for Mobile Banking using any other participating member bank’s ATM.

Card-to-Card Fund Transfer (C2C)

• The service enables cardholders of participating member bank to use NFS network ATMs of participating member bank for initiating funds transfer to the any other participating member bank’s cardholder’s account.

Cheque Book Request (CBR)

• This service enables cardholder of participating member bank to request for Cheque Book using any other participating member Bank’s ATM.

Statement Request (SR)

• This service enables cardholder of participating member bank to request for account statement using any other participating member Bank’s ATM.

Aadhaar Number Seeding (ANS)

• This service enables cardholder of participating member bank to request for seeding of Aadhaar number in the account linked to the card using any other participating member Bank’s ATM.