New Delhi, Aug. 11 -- The Reserve Bank of India's (RBI) plan to introduce polymer notes will entail significant costs because cassettes that hold cash in ATMs will have to be replaced, a senior official at a large state-owned bank said on Tuesday.

The banker said that polymer notes cannot be put in current automated teller machines (ATMs) without replacing the cassettes. These would mean an additional expense for banks, although lenders are yet to assess how much they will spend on this.

The banker, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the cost of replacing an ATM is about Rs.2 lakh and that of changing the cassettes will be lower.

"As far as we know, there are no companies in India that produce these cassettes and therefore there...