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'Reserve train tickets at ATMs' The Railways would soon enable buying of reserved train tickets from ATMs, which are being set up at railway stations. The ATMs would have Internet access facility, using which passengers can book e-tickets. After entering into an agreement with the State Bank of India to set up 682 ATMs at railway stations, Indian Railways entered into an agreement with six nationalised banks to set up another 711 ATMs at railway stations for passengers to withdraw cash. Out of the 711 ATMs, 473 will have e-ticketing facilities. The banks include Canara Bank, Bank of Baroda, Dena Bank, Union Bank of India, Indian Bank and Punjab National Bank. Currently, 86 ATMs have been installed at various stations and by the end of 2006-07, 250 ATMs are expected to be operational. The Railways aims to set up 4,000 ATMs at various stations. PNB offers online share trading Punjab National Bank (PNB) has launched online share trading services for its customers. It has tied-up with IDBI Capital Market Services to enable the bank's customers to accesswww.IDBIpaisabuilder.in, a Web-based portal, for investing in equity, mutual funds and initial public offerings. This alliance with IDBI Capital Market Services would help the bank to offer online trading in shares and, thereby, enlarge the number of demat accounts. With this tie-up, a PNB customer can get an integrated 3-in-1 online account that includes bank, investment and demat accounts. One can even link existing savings and demat accounts. PNB is now serving about 3.8 crore customers through its 4,500 branches. At present, the bank has about 35,000 demat accounts spread across 165 branches in 55 cities. It expects to add another 25,000 demat accounts by Mar'07. Bank of India's e-share trading Bank of India is launching online share trading jointly with broking firm Asit C Mehta Investment Intermediates Ltd. The broking firm would provide the online trading facility while the bank would offer banking facilities like demat and savings bank accounts. SBI too joins e-trading brigade, strikes pact The country's largest bank, State Bank of India (SBI), is slated to enter into a strategic alliance with the Mumbai-based brokerage Motilal Oswal Securities to provide integrated e-trading platform to their customers. This will possibly be the first entry by a large PSU bank in the online trading arena. At present such services are provided by broking firms in partnership with private banks. Players like ICICI Bank and HDFC Bank offer seamless trading with their subsidiaries ICICIdirect.com and HDFC Securities, respectively. This will broaden the scope of trading since the less-savvy IT customers, who have always been banking with a PSU bank, will now have an access to online trading facilities with the tie-up.