India's largest bank, the State Bank of India, will issue train tickets on the Internet for rail passengers from September 3.

To be issued initially from the bank's 500 branches in 70 cities across the country in collaboration with the Indian Railways Train Reservation System, the bank's customers will be able to book/reserve the tickets directly from either their home or any cyber cafe.

"As part of our e-banking services, we will offer this facility from this week to eliminate the hardship of our customers going to the reservation counters and standing in long queues for booking their train journeys," SBI Chairman A K Purwar said in Bangalore on Sunday.

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The bank's customers will be able to access the Indian Railways reservation system directly from our Web site and transact the process. The fare amount will be debited to their account, and the railways will deliver the tickets at their address by courier in 48 hours from Delhi," Purwar said.

"After getting feedback on the success of the pilot project, we will be expanding the e-ticket service to other branches where computerisation has been completed," Purwar stated.

About 5,900 branches of the bank's total branch network of 9,000 have been computerized so far. The bank is aiming to network the remaining branches by the end of the current fiscal year (2003-04).

Booking of train tickets on the Internet is set to grow as evidenced by the record number of bookings witnessed by railways through its IRTPS Web site.

SBI Credit Khajane

In another significant development, the bank is launching the 'SBI Credit Khajane' this month to all its housing loan customers for availing additional loans at a concession of 0.25 percent below the existing interest rates.

The new retail-banking scheme will enable its housing loan customers to borrow personal loans for either buying a car/two-wheeler, school/college education of their wards, or even petrol allowances.

"Only those customers who have been servicing their home loans promptly over the last one year will be eligible for the Khajane scheme. Out of the 2.4 million housing loan customers, about 150,000 have become eligible on account of their timely re-payment of loans.

"We expect half of them to avail of this new loan offer with attractive incentives and options by December," Purwar claimed.

The bank has disbursed Rs 9319 crore (Rs 93.19 billion) for housing loans during the preceding fiscal year (2002-03).

SBI to expand ATM network

The State Bank of India is set to expand its ATM network across the country by tying up with other private and public sector banks by this month-end for emerging as the largest credit card business operator.

Apart from increasing its 2000 ATM kiosks to 3000 plus during the current fiscal year (2003-04), the bank is in talks with 4-6 other banks to expand the network so that more customers can have access to automatic teller machines.

"We will be tying with Visa and MasterCard by this month-end to enable card holders of even other banks to access our ATM networks for drawing cash on 24x7x365 days basis," Purwar said.

The sharing of the ATM network among the banks will not only enable its optimal utilisation, but also save costs on the capital-intensive investments that go in setting up these machines.

According to the banking industry sources, besides Citibank, new generation banks such as ICICI Bank, UTI Bank, HFDC Bank have among them about 3,000 ATMs across the country.

"By tying up with these new generation banks and a couple of nationalised banks such as Corporation Bank, we are aiming to emerge the largest credit card bank from the second position currently," Purwar asserted.

The bank's officials have also claimed that SBI had the lowest delinquency rate in the credit card business in the industry. It is around 5.19 per cent as against 10 per cent in the banking industry.

Admitting that the non-food credit-off take during the first five months of the current fiscal was not on expected lines, Purwar, however, said the revival of the core sectors such as steel and cement and a good monsoon this season would lead to better credit-off in the second half of this year.

"We are looking for a 16 percent growth during the current fiscal. We hope to see lot of fresh investment by new companies and expansion by the existing firms, especially in the infrastructure and core sectors," Purwar stated.