TW Newsdesk, Nov 24: The State Bank of India (SBI) has come up with a response following a row over refunds for digital transaction. India’s largest public sector bank on the day clarified that it does not charge any transaction fee for Basic Savings Bank Deposit (BSBD) accounts. In a statement, SBI said that no transaction fee is charged from the account, including transactions done via Unified Payments Interface (UPI) and RuPay debit cards. The State Bank of India has a base of over 16 crore Basic Savings Bank Deposit accounts out of which Financial Inclusion (FI) customer base is around 14 crores, the bank said.

According to a recently published media report quoting an IIT study, it was said that the lender is yet to return Rs 164 crore of undue fee charged from the account holders of Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana (PMJDY) towards digital payments during April 2017 and December 2019. The study also mentioned that the bank has returned only Rs 90 crore to these account holders on the instructions of the government, for transactions via UPI and Rupay cards.

It said that during April 2017 to September 2020, SBI had collected over Rs 254 crore towards at least 14 crore UPI/ RuPay transactions by charging Rs 17.70 per transactions on BSBD account customers under the Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana.

In a response to this claim, the SBI on Tuesday, November 23, in a statement said, “We reiterate that BSBD customer do not pay any charges for digital transactions including transactions using Unified Payment Interface (UPI) and RuPay debit cards.”