Bengaluru: While long queues continued outside ATMs and banks on Friday, the situation appears to be gradually easing in several parts of the city.

Many reported that the waiting time to collect or exchange cash from bank branches was around one hour in the morning as against a couple. “I was waiting since 10 am and got to do the exchange by 11.10 am. I was the 41st person in the queue,’ said Ashalaltha Lakshman, a teacher from Malleswaram.

“To avoid the rush and wait I didn’t try to go to a bank till today and applied for half-day leave from work to be here,” she said. People also seemed happier using ATMs. “I was fourth in the line at a Canara Bank ATM in Madiwala and had four cards to collect my money. It was five minutes work,” said a happy customer, Naveen Prasad.

Coming to the rescue of people several banks have now installed cash deposit machines to speed up the process. An ICICI bank customer said it took him just three minutes to deposit Rs 10,000 through the machine at the bank’s Ashok Nagar branch.

“If banks had introduced these machines from day one, they could have avoided the long queues,” said the customer, also happy to note that banks were now refilling their ATMs twice a day. “With this the cash crunch problem should be solved in a couple of days,” he added optimistically.