Savings bank account holder? Good news! Pay no fee for these transactions

For savings bank account holders, here is some great news! They will not have to pay online banking transaction charges from January, 2020, which is just a couple of days away. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has directed its mandate banks not to charge savings bank account customers for online transactions in the NEFT system with effect from January 2020. From next year, savings bank account holders can pay small bills online or through UPI, or mobile wallet payment gateway at tolls, petrol pumps and even for paying the parking bill. In pursuance of its vision to promote digital payments, RBI's endeavour has been to establish a state of the art payment systems that are efficient, convenient, safe, secure and affordable. The efforts have resulted in rapid growth in the retail digital payment systems.

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In a written press statement in regard to online banking transaction charges waiver the RBI proposed the following steps to boost online banking in India:

1] Mandate banks not to charge savings bank account customers for online transactions in the NEFT system with effect from January 2020;

2] Operationalise the Acceptance Development Fund to increase acceptance infrastructure with effect from January 1, 2020;

3] Constitute a Committee to assess the need for a plurality of QR codes and merits of their co-existence or convergence from both systemic and consumer viewpoints;

4] Permit all authorised payment systems and instruments (non-bank PPIs, cards and UPI) for linking with National Electronic Toll Collection (NETC) FASTags. Going forward, this will facilitate the use of FASTags for parking, fuel, etc., payments in an interoperable environment; and

5] Enable processing of e-mandates for transactions through UPI.

The RBI statement informs that the digital payments constituted a high 96 per cent of total non-cash retail payments during the period October 2018 to September 2019. During the same period, the National Electronic Funds Transfer (NEFT) and Unified Payments Interface (UPI) systems handled 252 crores and 874 crore transactions with year on year growth of 20 per cent and 263 per cent respectively. This rapid growth in the payment systems, inter-alia, has been facilitated by a series of measures taken by the RBI.