After offering the facility of zero balance accounts for nearly five years, State Bank of India (SBI) has now decided to reintroduce the penalty on non-maintenance of minimum balance in accounts from April 1.
In addition to the this, the bank has also decided to revise the charges on other services, including ATMs.
Reportedly, SBI will permit its savings bank account holders to deposit three free of charges cash deposits in a month and levy Rs. 50 plus service tax on every transaction exceeding the limit.
For current account holders, the charges levied by the bank could go as high as Rs 20,000, reported The Hindu.
According to the list of revised charges of SBI, failure to maintain Monthly Average Balance (MAB) in accounts will attract penalty of up to Rs. 100 plus service tax.
The savings bank account holders in the metropolitan areas will be charged Rs 100 plus service tax, if the balance falls below 75 per cent of the MAB of Rs. 5,000. If the shortfall is 50 per cent or less of the MAB, then the bank will charge Rs 50 plus service tax.
The charges and MAB will vary based on the location of the bank. It will be minimum in case of rural branches.The charges are now being reintroduced from April 1.
The Reserve Bank has permitted banks to levy charges for breaching minimum balance limit.
Furthermore, withdrawal of cash from ATMs will attract a charge of up to Rs 20 if the number of transactions exceeds three from other banks’ ATMs in a month and Rs 10 for more than five withdrawals from SBI ATMs.
However, account holders with the bankwill not have to pay any charge on withdrawals from SBI ATMs if the balance exceeds Rs 25,000. In case of other banks’ ATM there will be no charge if the balance exceeds Rs 1 lakh.
SBI will charge Rs 15 for SMS alerts per quarter from debit card holders who maintain average quarterly balance of up to Rs 25,000 during the three-month period.
There will be no charge for Unified Payments Interface (UPI)/ Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) transactions of up to Rs 1,000.
