ICICI Bank, the country's largest private sector bank, has scaled up the number of its fully-automated Touch Banking branches to 100 in 33 cities across the country.

These branches, which are open on all days 24X7, help customers do real-time cash deposits, withdraw money, deposit cheques and get instant receipts, transfer funds, open fixed deposits and generate bank statements. It also offers account related information through Internet banking and video conferencing.

An ICICI Bank spokesperson said, ''We have observed that an individual spends around 10 hours a day at work. It leaves very little time to do routine works including day-to-day banking. So we felt the need to offer our customers an option of banking at their convenience and at any time of the day.''

ICICI Bank, which is a pioneer in technological innovation in banking, has started offering the touch banking services over a year ago. Buoyed by the customer's response, it is now expanding the number of such branches. Transactions at Touch Banking branches have doubled in the last six months to close to 2 million in Feb, 2014. Around a lakh new customers transact at these branches every month.

ICICI Bank will open many such branches in future. It will open new Touch Banking branches not only in big cities but also in small towns. ''Customers' aspirations are similar everywhere across the country and we are seeing fast adoption of technology in small cities,'' said the spokesperson. In addition to big metro cities, the Bank has already opened Touch Banking branches in cities like Rajkot, Vadodara, Vizag, Lucknow, Raipur, Surat, Siliguri and Guwahati, among others.

Shares of the bank gained Rs 39.7, or 3.25%, to settle at Rs 1,262. The total volume of shares traded was 358,351 at the BSE (Thursday).