Minimum account balance: SBI says penalty only after April 24

Mumbai: Account holders in State Bank of India and its associate banks can heave a sigh of relief. Country’s largest public sector lender has indicated it will not slap penalty for violation of minimum balance rule till April 24.

An SBI spokesperson said that the merger of data from all five banks — State Bank of Jaipur and Bikaner, State Bank of Hyderabad, State Bank of Mysore, State Bank of Patiala and State Bank of Travancore —  was a mammoth task and will take till April 24 to complete.

“The synchronisation process will have to be completed to commence all operations from one common platform. Once this process is completed, SBI’s charges would become applicable to these customers,” The Times of India quoted the official as saying.

The SBI has fixed Rs 5,000 as minimum balance to be maintained in accounts at branches in metro cities. Besides, Rs 3,000, Rs 2,000 and Rs 1,000 have been decided as minimum balance requirement for accounts at urban, semi-urban and  rural branches of the bank.

Failure to keep minimum balance required at the end of the month would attract a penalty of Rs 100 and services tax. This is applicable to account holders in metro cities.

With this the public sector banking behemoth has also revised its cash transaction charges especially those done at its automated teller machine booths.

Under the new charges, SBI will charge Rs 10 for every transaction done after five transactions using its debit/credit cards at its ATMs. There will be no charges for three transactions for other banks at its ATMs. After the limit, a non-SBI customer will be charged Rs 20 that does not include service tax.