The country's largest lender State Bank of India (SBI), has brought major changes in the rules pertaining to SBI loan, cheque book, ATM transactions, minimum account balance, RTGS and NEFT charges, which came into effect from October 1, 2019, i.e. today.
From today, SBI's ATM charges have changed. While earlier, the SBI customers were able to do only six free debit transactions, the bank has now allowed them to do four more free transactions from the SBI ATMs of metro cities, taking the limit to 10 transactions.
According to sources, loans will now be available at a cheaper rate. As a big bonanza for the customers ahead of the festivals, the SBI has decided to adopt Repo Rate as an external benchmark for all floating rate loans of MSME, housing and retail loans from October 1. This is likely to benefit the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) also.
SBI in a press release stated, 'For all loans with variable interest rate, we have decided to adopt the external standard repo rate of interest rate. These interest rates on small and industry loans, housing loans and other retail loans will be effective from October 1, 2019."
SBI has decided to reduce the monthly minimum balance for customers in metro cities from Rs 5000 to Rs 3000. If the minimum balance of the account holders is less than 75 percent or between 50-75 percent, penalty of Rs 15 or Rs 12 will be levied with GST, which is currently Rs 80 and Rs 60 and GST, respectively.
As per sources, National Electronic Funds Transfer (NEFT) and real-time gross settlement (RTGS) charges have also changed. NEFT transactions up to Rs 10,000 will attract GST with Rs 2. Similarly, if NEFT transactions above 2 lakh will attract GST with 20 rupees, between two lakh and five lakh from RTGS will attract GST of Rs 20 while transactions above Rs 5 lakh will attract Rs 40 plus GST.
SBI has also tightened the rules for cheque bounce. According to the bank's circular, if a cheque is returned after October 1 due to any technical reason (other than bounce), the issuer of the check has to pay a charge of Rs 150 plus GST. This charge will be Rs 168 including GST.