State Bank of India has decided to hike the minimum charges for cash deposit at non-home branches to ₹50 from ₹10 in a bid to augment fee income. The new charges will come into effect from March 8.

A home branch is the branch where a customer has a bank account. All other branches of the bank are non-home branches for the customer.

SBI’s fee income increased two per cent to ₹5,173 crore in the first half of the current financial year against ₹5,052 crore in the year ago period.

In the personal segment, the maximum amount of cash deposit that SBI customers can currently make at non-home branches is ₹25,000 per day.

In the case of the small and medium enterprises segment, the maximum cash deposit limit at non-home branches is ₹2 lakh per day. When it comes to cash handling, India’s largest bank does not levy any charge for up to one bundle of 1,000 pieces (of banknotes). For more than one bundle, the bank charges ₹102 a bundle and the maximum cash handling charge is pegged at ₹10,187.

SBI’s public sector counterpart Punjab National Bank (PNB) currently charges Re 1 per ₹1,000 or part thereof with a minimum of ₹25 a transaction if its customer deposit cash at a non-home branches.

However, PNB does not levy any charges for depositing cash in Recurring Deposit, Term Loan, demand loan, including non-performing asset and protested accounts.

The Reserve Bank of India’s committee on customer service in banks has said that levy of service charges on non-home branch transactions are not justified under the core banking solution environment (whereby all the branches/ controlling offices and ATMs are networked). The committee said there was a general discontent among all strata of customers about charges levied by banks for getting certain services such as pass-book updation and cash deposits at non-home branches.

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