What is changing in the financial world from August 1. Here's a look

From next week, a few key changes linked with your personal finance is going to take place. These include ATM charges, doorstop banking charges of India Post Payments Bank and 24X7 NACH facilities. These are going to change from August 1. Here is a checklist.

24-hour National Automated Clearing House

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has already announced that National Automated Clearing House (NACH) will function every day from August 1.

Usually, salary, pension, or dividend payments are made through NACH, as the money reaches the accounts of a large number of people at the same time. At present, this facility is available only on working days of the bank. This explains why we never get salary or pension or any other mass payment (except NEFT and RTGS) on Sundays or holidays.

NACH, a bulk payment system operated by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) facilitates one-to-many credit transfers such as payment of dividend, interest, salary and pension.

It also facilitates the collection of payments pertaining to electricity, gas, telephone, water, periodic installments towards loans, investments in mutual funds, and insurance premiums.

NACH has emerged as a popular and prominent mode of direct benefit transfer (DBT) of government schemes to a large number of beneficiaries.

ATM interchange fees

Recently RBI allowed the banks to increase ATM interchange fee per transaction from Rs 15 to Rs 17 for financial transactions and from Rs 5 to Rs 6 for non-financial transactions in all centers.

This is scheduled to be effective from August 1. The RBI said that the charges have been allowed to increase given the increasing cost of ATM deployment and expenses towards ATM maintenance incurred by banks/white label ATM operators.

Apart from this, the central bank has also revised ATM cash withdrawal charges which shall be effective from January 1, 2022.

ICICI Bank

Major private sector lender ICICI Bank is all set to revise various charges related to cash transactions, ATM interchange and cheque books, among others, for its savings account holders.

The lender has allowed customers four free cash transactions (including deposit and withdrawals) per month, a limit beyond which a fee of Rs 150 per transaction would be charged.

 The limit for free transactions for ICICI Bank customers at the home branch would be Rs 1 lakh per account per month. Beyond that Rs 5 will be levied per Rs 1,000 subject to a minimum of Rs 150.

For third-party cash transactions (the total of deposits and withdrawals), a charge of Rs 150 per transaction will be levied up to a limit of Rs 25,000 per day.

Doorstep banking of IPPB

The customers of India Post Payments Bank (IPPB) will have to pay an additional charge for availing of its doorstep banking services from August 1.

IPPB has fixed a doorstep banking charge of Rs 20 plus GST per request per customer, with effect from August 1, 2021.

As of now, the doorstep banking facility is free of cost. A customer can avail of as many transactions as needed during a single DSB request.

But he/she has to pay according to the new rule from Sunday. IPPB’s doorstep banking facility covers almost all services: opening an account, cash deposits and withdrawals, 24×7 money transfers, recharge, and bill payments, or buying life insurance and general insurance.