In Bhopal, Delhi and Mumbai, many ATMs appeared to have returned to normal.
Nine days after the sudden ban on Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes, queues at ATMs and banks were shorter in many cities.
In Bhopal, Delhi and Mumbai, many ATMs appeared to have returned to normal even though long queues have still not gone away.
"There was no line when I came this morning," said a student withdrawing cash at an ATM in Bhopal's MP Nagar area, one of the city's busiest.
His friend said it appeared that the situation had really settled down for the first time since around 85 per cent of the cash in circulation was declared banned on November 8.
Two days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi's abrupt announcement, banks across the nation opened to unbelievably long queues of people scrambling to exchange or withdraw cash, and a day later, ATMs also collected huge crowds.
Those queues have been relentless, and have stretched to hours for customers. People have been found waiting outside banks at 3 or 4 am or even overnight. In some villages, shoes, vessels, passbooks and even stones have been used as proxy by people desperate for cash.
In Bhopal today, the average wait for a person was eight to 10 minutes in some ATMs. However, the machines were also running out of cash too soon. At banks, the queues were short in the morning but grew during the day.
Shorter lines were also seen in parts of Chandigarh.
A bank manager said the wait had become far less after the government announced that indelible ink would be used to stop people for making multiple exchanges at different branches. "The queues have reduced to a third," he said.
People can withdraw up to Rs 2,500 from ATMs and exchange Rs 2,000 at banks. Earlier, Rs 4,500 could be swapped at a time.
Among the main reasons for the unrelenting crowds at ATMs is that machines are not calibrated to dispense new Rs 2,000 notes and run out of Rs 100 notes too quickly.
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said of the two lakh ATMs across the country, 22,500 will be recalibrated today.
Top government sources say they expect banks to be back to normal by November-end as much of the printing ofr ₹2,000 notes is more or less over and ATMs will have been recalibrated.