CHENNAI: Banks are now more keen on expanding their points of sale (PoS) network than ATMs due to the government's focus on digital transactions after demonetisation and lower amounts of cash in circulations. According to RBI data, banks have increased PoS machines by 95% this August to nearly 29 lakh from last year. In comparison, the number of ATMs has only increased 2.5% to 2.2 lakh machines.For PoS makers, this has led to a boom in business. "While ATM expansion can be weighed down by expense of the machine and rentals of real estate space, PoS networks are a lot cheaper with lower maintenance costs. The new m-PoS and digital PoS machines average Rs 1,500-7,000 and are easy to use," says Pradeep Oommen , CEO, Bijlipay. With the cost per machine for ATMs being anywhere in the Rs 1-5 lakh range, depending on the features and capabilities, banks are finding that their investments in an ATM network are not justifying the returns and costs involved. Parthasarathi Mukherjee, CEO of Lakshmi Vilas Bank , which has about 981 ATMs in its network, says, "We have decided to go slow on our ATM expansion plans as we need to check the viability. For further expansion, we would need to have sufficient volumes to justify the cost."And volumes have gone down year over year. RBI data shows that transaction volumes of debit cards at ATMs have dipped 5.3% to 716 million this August from 757 million for the same period last year. Debit card usage at PoS terminals has more than doubled to 265 million in August 2017 from 131 million last year.