SBI has planned to expand its IT expenditure to Rs 1,000 crore in 2008-09 against Rs 600 crore in 2007-08. This figure is likely to enlarge between 1,600cr and 2,000cr by the next year. Apart form this cost; the bank will also spend in installing more ATM machines, a large part of which has been outsourced. The bank is planning to stay on a constant spree to expand its ATMs. It aims to increase its ATMs to 20,000 which are more than double the number of ATMs now at 9,000.

Sinha said, "We will introduce new two-faced ATMs, which will increase the daily hits per machine to 700 from 330 at present and reduce the transaction cost to Rs 10." Also, the bank has joined hands with Indian Railways to roll-out the facilities like e-trade and e-freight. These services will enable SBI and its partners to use digitized documents and facilitate transactions online.

SBI wants the customers to shift to other modes payment and thereby will offer more cash-back kind of schemes on debit or credit cards to expand the operations at retail level.

All these innovations show that the days of branch banking are soon going to be over.