SBI Card – payment solution provider of SBI had decided to charge extra fee on the payments made by cheque. Rs 100 will be charged to the customers who drop below Rs 2000 cheques in the drop box. SBI Card is the only venture that do not comes under the term bank but is considered as a finance company and so incurs an amount in collecting and depositing cheques.
These charges are not applicable for SBI account holders, who make cheque payments. These charges will only affect the non-SBI cheques.
SBI Card MD and CEO Vijay Jasuja said, “A large number of cheques were being dropped late into the boxes and subsequently disputes were raised on late payment charges. We have done a deep analysis. It is not possible that every month the bank is making a mistake in cheque collection”. In order to be saved by such issues, the bank is planning to discourage cheque payments.
As per the CEO of SBI Card, only 8% people use cheques for paying bills, 6% have cheques of more than Rs 2000, as a result only 2% will get affected. In order to attract people to pay via digital ways, the bank is providing reward points to the online payment users.
Though SBI Card provides 14 ways of payment, but most of them work over internet. Thus the only way left other than internet and mobile help are these standing instructions.
“We are only looking at recovering that clearing cost. When we are talking about digitization and all modes are available, what is the need of paying by cheque?” said Jasuja.
