Your account is somebody's product
A bank is not a locker. It takes your deposit, lends it out at a higher rate than it pays you, and sells services around the account. None of that is sinister. It is how the business works, and every part of it is disclosed.
What catches people is where the disclosure lives: a schedule of charges, published on the bank's site, forming part of the terms accepted when the account was opened. It is a document almost nobody reads, and the charges land quietly as small debits with abbreviated narrations.
The amounts differ from bank to bank, and they differ between account types at the same bank. That is precisely why the categories are worth knowing rather than the numbers. Once you know what kinds of charges exist, you can go and read your own.
The five places a charge usually hides
Almost every complaint about an unexpected debit on a savings account falls into one of five buckets. None of them is unusual and none of them is hidden — they are simply unread.
| Charge | What sets it off |
|---|---|
| Non-maintenance of minimum balance | The average balance for the month falls below what your account type requires |
| ATM withdrawals past the free count | More than the free monthly allowance, at your own bank's machines or another bank's |
| Debit card fee | An annual or joining fee on the card, charged whether or not you used it |
| Transaction alerts | A recurring charge for the messages sent on every debit and credit |
| Cheque return | A cheque you wrote bounces, or one you paid in comes back unpaid |
Minimum balance, and the rules around the penalty
The requirement itself is set by the bank and varies by account type. What the penalty may look like is not entirely open. A 2014 Reserve Bank circular on penal charges for non-maintenance of minimum balances in savings accounts laid down how banks are to behave here.
Three parts of it are worth carrying around. The bank is to alert you — by message, email or letter — when the balance falls short, and give you a month to restore it before charging anything. The charge is to be proportionate to the size of the shortfall, not a flat amount unrelated to it. And the levy of charges is not to push the account into a negative balance.
So a large fixed penalty on a small shortfall, applied without warning, is not what the rule contemplates. Knowing that is the difference between assuming a debit was inevitable and asking about it.
ATM withdrawals past the free count
This one has a floor set by the regulator, which makes it unusually knowable. Under the Reserve Bank's directions on ATM and cash recycler usage, banks are to offer savings account holders at least five free transactions a month at their own bank's machines.
At other banks' machines the free count is at least three a month in the six metro centres and at least five a month elsewhere. In both cases the count includes non-financial transactions — a balance enquiry uses one up in the same way a cash withdrawal does, which surprises people who check twice before withdrawing once.
Beyond the free allowance, the same directions cap what a customer may be charged at ₹23 per transaction plus applicable taxes, with effect from 1 May 2025. A bank may charge less. It may not charge more.
The rest, and where the numbers live
Debit card fees, cheque return charges and alert charges are set by each bank and published in its schedule of charges. There is no single national figure for any of them, and quoting one bank's number as though it were the market rate is how people end up surprised at a different bank.
The Reserve Bank's Master Circular on Customer Service in Banks sets the frame these sit inside: a scheme for ensuring reasonableness of bank charges, and a requirement that charges for basic services be fixed and communicated transparently. On alerts specifically, banks were told to levy the charge on actual usage rather than as a flat fee for everyone.
The practical version is short. Find the schedule for your account variant, not the bank's generic page — a salary account, an ordinary savings account and a senior citizens' account at the same bank can carry three different minimum balances and three different card fees. Changes are notified, usually by email or in a statement footer, and a change you did not read binds you the same as one you did.
The account that has no minimum balance
The Basic Savings Bank Deposit Account exists for exactly this problem. The Reserve Bank's 2012 circular is unambiguous: the account is not to have the requirement of any minimum balance, and it is to be treated as a normal banking service available to all customers, not as a product for the poor.
In return, the account is deliberately limited. A defined set of facilities comes without charge — deposits and withdrawals at branches and ATMs, receipt of electronic credits, and an ATM card or ATM-cum-debit card — and withdrawals are capped at four a month, counting ATM withdrawals. Deposits into it are not capped.
One condition matters if you are considering it. A customer cannot hold this account and another savings account at the same bank; an existing one has to be closed within thirty days of opening it. That is a real trade-off, and it is the kind that is easier to weigh before you sign than after.