Mobile Banking
The sms alerts provided free of charge by the banks are to be charged from this financial year onwards.
New gen banks have already started to yield charges for the sms alerts regarding the transaction details. Now the country's largest Public sector bank State bank of India (SBI) has alos started to charge sms alerts. If the other banks also start to follow the footsteps of SBI, the fre sms alert is likely to terminate in the near time.
Rs.60 to Rs.120 are fixed by the banks for availing these services. Certain banks have fixed charges inclusive of service charges while some others have imposed 12% service charge and 3% education cess too over fixed fee. SBI sources have said that the charge will be levied by the end of June. The fee will be rs. 60/- inclusive of service charge. But there is no official declaratiion whether this levy is appplicable to ATM, debit-credit card users or for other special SMS alerts.
ICICI bank, HDFC bank, Axis bank, Kotak Mahindra etc have already charging their users. The Insta Alert service had been charging from April onwards by HDFC. Salary, savings accounts are levied Rs.15/- for every 3 months. But for current accounts the rate is Rs. 25/- each per quarter. But email alert is still smae.
ICICI bank also incurs fee Rs.15/- inclusiv eof tax for 3 months period. But senior citizen savings account, silver savings account, privileged banking account etc. are exempted from charging fee. Axis bank charges @ Rs.5/- from June 15 onwards. Kodak mahindra
Kotak mahindra, on the other hand , has decreased the annual fee of rs.200 for daily balance in savings account to rs.120. Weekly balance information service, transactions, other value added services etc alerts are available now at Rs.60. This is applicable from July 1 onwards.YES bank yields rs.10/- per month from smart salary account holders.
The increase in the sms rates four to five hold by the telecom companies is the reason they substantiate for transferring these levies to the customers. Avg sms sent daily by banks is in the range of 7-10 lakhs. Since the rate for a msg has increased from 5 paise to 25 paise, the banks have no other choice left...
Wake up Customers...wake up!!!
