Good news for SBI Savings Account holders! These charges have been removed for customers

There is good news for SBI Savings Account holders! Through its Twitter handle, SBI has informed that now the savings account holders don’t have to pay charges for SMS service and non-maintenance of monthly average balance.

SMS Alert charges per quarter from Debit Cardholders who maintain an average quarterly balance of Rs 25000 and below during the quarter was Rs 12 including GST per quarter. This charge was already waived for all Salary Package accounts, Current Account variants such as Regular, Gold, Diamond, Platinum customers.

RBI has permitted banks to levy Minimum Balance Non-maintenance Charges, subject to compliance with certain guidelines for a suitable slab structure for recovery of charges. However, banks have to ensure that the recovery of charges should not turn into negative balance solely on account of levy of Service Charges.

In most banks, the savings account has a requirement of maintaining a minimum average balance on a monthly or quarterly basis failing which there is a penalty that the bank levies.

The bank also announced that it is waiving off Average Monthly Balance (AMB) maintenance and it will be applicable for all Savings Bank Accounts. In case the minimum balance was not restored within a reasonable period, which shall not be less than one month from the date of notice of shortfall, penal charges may be recovered under intimation to the account holder by the banks who levies this charge.

By registering for the SBI SMS Alert service, the account holder can stay updated on their banking transactions made in the SBI bank account. Here is how to register for the SBI SMS Alerts, what all alerts you can set up and in which event do they help.

The SBI SMS Alert service will trigger the moment a specific event that you have registered for takes place such as when a financial transaction happens or when the account balance falls below a certain limit.

To register for SMS alerts, you may get it done at your bank branch. Additionally, SBI SMS Alert can be set through the Internet banking site by accessing SBI Online. However, before you start the registration process, make sure your mobile number should be registered with SBI.

Steps to set SBI SMS Alerts

Step 1: Log on to the Internet banking site i.e. SBI Online

Step 2: Click the SMS Alerts link in the Requests tab.

Step 3: You will be shown a list of your accounts including savings account or current account or the OD account.



Step 4: Select the account for which you wish to enable SMS alerts and click OK.

Step 5: Select the events for which you wish to receive alerts. If an alert is associated with a threshold (Above the threshold value), set the value for the same and confirm.

Once the SMS alerts are registered, you can change the alert settings and even the threshold limits as and when you want by logging to your net banking. You can also disable all your alerts whenever you wish to. To do it, in the SMS Alerts Registration or the Updation page, select an account and click the disable hyperlink. On the next page, a confirmation will be asked to disable the SMS alerts, post which they will be disabled.