The Reserve Bank of India rolled out a policy in August 2014, pertaining to the amount and the number of ATM transactions offered by banks for free of charge.
State Bank of India (SBI), India’s largest bank, reportedly refused to divulge information as to how much it earns from ATM charges. Chandrasekhar Gaur, a social activist from Madhya Pradesh had filed a Right to Information (RTI) request to seek details of revenues the bank earned in the financial year 2017-18 by charging customers on ATM withdrawals, according to a Times Now report. Notably, banks charge a certain amount of service fee after the free transaction limit gets exhausted.
Replying to Gaur’s RTI request, a top SBI official told him that currently the bank doesn’t have this information, and refused to take the request forward citing section 7(9) of RTI Act, that says “an information shall ordinarily be provided in the form in which it is sought unless it would disproportionately divert the resources of the public authority or would be detrimental to the safety or preservation of the record in question”.
“Divulging this information may cause misuse of bank’s resources,” the bank official told Gaur.
Surprisingly, SBI did entertain Gaur’s same request in 2016 and 2017 on separate RTI filings. Bank had informed Gaur that it earned Rs 1556.27 crore in financial year 2016-17 on ATM charges and 310.44 crore in financial year 2015-16. In FY 2014-15, the public sector lender earned Rs 210.47 crore via ATM fees, said Gaur.
Gaur is going to appeal against the bank’s response to higher authorities.
The Reserve Bank of India rolled out a policy in August 2014, pertaining to the amount and the number of ATM transactions offered by banks for free of charge.
As per the policy, customers are now eligible for 3 free transactions instead of the earlier five free transactions by debit card. Not to forget, free transactions consist of both financial and non-financial transactions. Non-financial transactions include services such as balance enquiry, changing the ATM pin, mini statement, and booking a Fixed Deposit etc.
Banks charge a nominal fee once the number of free transactions are exhausted by a customer. The maximum fee that can be charged per transaction is Rs 20.
