In a push to digital payments, state-owned lender SBI will cut charges on electronic transfer of funds through NEFT and RTGS by up to 75 per cent from Saturday, benefiting nearly 5.27 crore customers, a release said on Thursday.
"The reduced charges will be applicable on the transactions done through internet banking (INB) and mobile banking (MB) services offered by the bank," it said while releasing the revised NEFT and RTGS charges from July 15.
As per the revised schedule, the NEFT charges on fund transfer up to Rs 10,000 has been halved to Re 1, and to Rs 2 for up to Rs 1 lakh.
For transfers between Rs 1 lakh and Rs 2 lakh, the NEFT charge will be reduced to Rs 3 from the existing Rs 12. The charge above Rs 2 lakh has been fixed at Rs 5 as against the current Rs 20.
For RTGS transactions, the charges will be Rs 5 for transactions between Rs 2 lakh and Rs 5 lakh. Currently, the bank charges Rs 20 for such transaction. If a customer transfers more than Rs 5 lakh through the RTGS channel, he will be charged Rs 10 as against Rs 40 currently.
There are different charges if the fund transfers are made in bank branches through executives. All the new charges will attract GST rate of 18 per cent.
The country's largest lender has also waived charges for fund transfer of up to Rs 1,000 done through Immediate Payment Service (IMPS).
"In sync with our strategy and complementing the focus of Government of India to create a digital economy, we have taken one more step to promote use of internet banking and mobile banking for doing NEFT and RTGS transactions by reduction of the charges," said Rajnish Kumar, Managing Director, State Bank of India.
At March-end, SBI had 3.27 crore Internet Banking customers and nearly 2 crore Mobile Banking customers. SBI is one of the top 50 global banks and the largest commercial bank in India in terms of assets, deposits, profits, branches, customers and employees.
The company had deposit base of Rs 25.85 lakh crore as on March 31 this year.
DeMo, digitisation duo have done in 7 months what would have taken 3 years
Demonetisation and the government's initiative to promote use of debit and credit cards at point of sale (PoS) terminals accelerated the growth of digital payment with the transaction volume reaching Rs 70,000 crore level in seven months, says a report.
"If demonetisation had not happened, it would have taken three years more for credit and debit cards transactions on PoS terminals to reach the current level of Rs 70,000 crore, assuming a yearly growth rate of 25 per cent. India has leapfrogged three years of digitisation in just 7 months," according to an SBI report, `Ecoflash'.
Even after seven months post-demonetisation, the transaction value is quite large and approximately double of what it had been corresponding month or period last year.
Post-demonetisation, banks have been able to install 11.8 lakh additional PoS terminals, the report said.
Increasing number of PoS terminals and ease of doing digital transaction will increase this level further, it said.
Similar trends are observed in usage of pre-paid instruments (PPI) including m-wallet, PPI cards, and paper vouchers and mobile banking too, the report said.
PPI witnessed a sharp growth with transactions value worth Rs 10,700 crore in May 2017 against Rs 5,100 crore in November 2016.
The report further said that such digitalisation will result in lower inflation.
An increase of Rs 10,000 crore-worth transactions by credit and debit cards at PoS terminals will lead to around 1.1 per cent decline in CPI inflation, the report said.
"This augurs well for a lower inflation regime going forward," it said.