Chennai: As members of trade unions plan a stir against banks rolling out charges on cash transactions beyond a limit, senior officials from State Bank of India, the country’s largest bank, said that they were yet to receive any written notice from the bank management.
“There has been no instruction that has been communicated to us. It will be a downward trend, in case there is. If other banks are charging Rs 150, SBI will levy a small sum, but that is beyond the free transactions,” said a branch manager of SBI bank.
Employees of the bank, however, felt that since cash-handling charges were already existed, it shouldn’t be a problem.
“Charges on minimum balance were already there. It was removed to promote financial inclusion. It is costly and difficult to process so many transactions, along with providing and maintaining ATMs. It is a good move as people will not only move to online transactions, and also learn to make one transaction in every five to six days rather than making every day,” he said.
Managing Director of City Union Bank, N Kamakodi, said that a decision would be taken in the next month if they’ll be following suit. “Handling cash becomes costly for the bank as we end up losing a lot of interest on cash and money. This move will be good to build a cashless economy. During demonetisation, people were moving to digital ways and now they are slowly moving back to their old ways.” “Already over 85 percent of the transactions are cashless,” he added.
