How much does your bank charge for issuing chequebooks?

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A savings account is one of the most popular banking products in India. When you open a savings account in a public or private bank, customers get a chequebook with a fixed number of leaves free of cost. Cheques are useful to execute services like bill payments, money transfers to someone else’s account or cash withdrawal.

The role of cheques is to primarily instruct your bank to pay a certain amount of money from your account to the person in whose name the cheque has been issued.

But once you exhaust the number of free leaves in your cheque book, banks will charge a specific amount to issue extra. Recently, the country’s largest lender, State Bank of India (SBI) announced a total of 10 chequebooks that would be provided free-of-cost to zero balance savings account or Basic Savings Bank Deposit (BSBD) account holders in a financial year. But post this, the bank will charge a fee to issue any further of these.

A 10 leaf chequebook would cost you Rs 40 + GST while a 25 leaf chequebook will be priced at Rs 75 + GST. In case of an emergency, Rs 50 + GST for a 10 leaf chequebook or part thereof would be chargeable from July 1 this year. SBI, however, mentioned that senior citizens don’t need to pay any service charges for new cheque books. These changes will come into effect from today, i.e., July 1, 2021.

Let’s take a look at the charges by some of the top banks in India with respect to chequebooks.

Bank of Baroda (BoB) offers up to 30 cheque leaves free of cost annually. It charges Rs 4/leaf after the limit has been exceeded. However, it charges only Rs 2.50/leaf for customers hailing from rural and semi-urban areas. ICICI Bank offers 20 free cheque leaves each financial year. Post this, the private bank charges Rs 20 for every extra 10-leaf Cheque Book.

Punjab National Bank (PNB), on the other hand, offers 20/25 cheques free of cost every year. Exceeding this limit, the bank will charge you Rs 3/leaf if a request is made online and Rs 4/leaf for offline requests.