SBI savings account holders receive less than one free check sheet per month per year
Until about July 2020, the SBI also offered 25 free checking holidays to savings account holders per fiscal year, but that number has since been reduced to 10. SBI Regular Savings Account customers now get “the first 10 free checks in a fiscal year,” according to its website.
ET Online called SBI customer service on June 28, 2021 and the call center manager confirmed it. According to the SBI website, after the first 10 free check starts per fiscal year, it will cost the savings account client Rs 40 plus GST for a 10-sheet checkbook, and Rs 75 plus GST for a checkbook. at 25 leaves.
Here is an overview of the check issuance rules and fees of some other major private and public sector banks as per details on their respective websites on June 28, 2021, for regular savings accounts.
| Bank | Check issuance fees |
| SBI | First 10 checks left free in a fiscal year; Subsequently: 10-sheet checkbook at Rs 40 plus TPS, 25-sheet checkbook at Rs 75 plus TPS |
| National Bank of Punjab | A checkbook of 20 to 25 sheets is free during a financial year; Custom request via: (a) Digital mode: Rs 3 per sheet; (b) Branch: Rs 4 per leaf Non-personalized: Rs 5 per sheet |
| Baroda Bank | Metro-urban after 30 sheets during a financial year, charge at Rs 4 per check sheet |
| HDFC Bank | Free: 25 checks per fiscal year Additional 25-sheet checkbook billed at Rs 75 per checkbook For seniors (from March 1, 2021) Free: 25 checks per fiscal year Additional check sheet charged at Rs 2 per sheet |
| ICICI Bank | None for 20 (In the process of carrying 25 free checks from August 1, 2021) Au pair check leaves in one year Rs 20 for each additional 10 sheet checkbook |
Source: Bank websites
Based on these figures, it can be seen that customers of banks like HDFC Bank, PNB and Bank of Baroda get more free check issuance each year than those of SBI. In addition, ICICI Bank is indeed increasing the number of free checks issued to its customers on savings accounts from August 1, 2021.
Free checking holidays are a service offered by banks to savings account holders to allow them to use their money for transactions in lieu of the savings account balance that the account holder kept with the bank. . Many years ago, at one point, most banks were offering 25 free checks to account holders per quarter – that’s 100 per year. However, with the increase in the freedom of operation given to banks by the RBI, this practice began to change.
Over the past year, SBI has completely waived the penalty for not maintaining the minimum balance in savings accounts. However, that seems to be the flip side. Obviously, fewer free checks mean more savings for SBI. Besides cutting costs, this move may well be an effort to push people to increasingly use digital banking channels.
However, is it justified to push people towards digital transactions by such methods? In India, a large number of people are not yet comfortable doing large money transactions online. Online transactions should be carried out very carefully in order to guard against loss of money due to fraud. This is also underlined by the banks and the RBI itself. With more and more new digital payment methods and players coming, learning the absolutely safe method of using each method will take and take time. In addition, there are also technological barriers. The mobile applications of the big banks have been confronted with numerous technical problems.
For example, HDFC Bank is grappling with many technical issues with its mobile banking app, and its CEO even recently apologized to its customers for the many outages.
Technological or technical problems also delayed and / or delayed a large number of financial transactions at the end of the last financial year, ie March 31, 2021. Many customers of various banks have faced related problems to money transfer via NEFT, IMPS and UPI at this time. Click here to read the full story.
Comments are closed.