Banks decide on cost-cutting - No debit-cards for non-operating accounts!
Posted on: 24/Dec/2019 11:23:24 AM
Are you keeping savings bank accounts without any transactions for a long period? If your answer is ‘Yes’, you will not get a debit card from the bank!
In a strong measure to cut down on exposes and also to prevent maloperations, the banks have decided the above step of not providing debit cards for non-operating accounts.
Many customers who open a savings bank or other accounts in the bank do not maintain them on a continuous basis.
As per the Reserve Bank of India rules, savings bank accounts which have been kept without operations over a period of 2 years are segregated as ‘inactive accounts’.
The project ‘Bank Account for every Citizen’, initiated the `Jandhan’ bank accounts for the common citizens and those who opened Jandhan accounts were issued ‘RuPay’ debit cards. As on last November, 29.69 bank account holders use RuPay cards. This is 13.5% more as compared to the last year!
The total number of people from the economically backward sections holding debit cards has now increased by 5% from 75% to 80%.
However, the major anxiety is that most of the Jandhan Accounts remain non-operated! Further, there is not even a single Rupee balance in most of the Jandhan Savings Accounts! They can be termed as ‘Zero Accounts’! The banks are put to hardships maintaining these accounts.
For the employees who work in companies/organisations located in rural areas, the monthly salary is credited to the savings accounts in the bank.
However, the employees who resing from one3 organisation to join another leave the salary bank accounts just as such as do not maintain operating them. So, many such accounts are rendered non-operative!
An expert consultant who offers economic advises shared in this regard:
‘The banks need to spend more on these non-operating savings and other accounts. Further, debit card details are stolen and several online illegal transactions are done. Because of this, the banks have decided not to issue Debit cards to all such non-operating bank account holders. The interested bank account holder needs to approach the bank for getting the debit card!’
Points to note:
- Bank accounts, where there have been no transactions over the last 2 years, are categorised as ‘inoperative accounts’
- As on last October, there were 99.8 Crores debit cards in use. As on last October, this has come down heavily by 15% and now there are 84.3 Crores debit cards.
- Apart from this, several thousands of ‘Jandhan’ accounts which were opened on the insistetence of the central government have been non-operative!
