Only 70% citizens feel charges on cash transaction are a bad decision: Survey

Banks in India recently began reintroducing charges for cash deposits and withdrawals. 

A survey carried out by LocalCircles found that nearly 70% people are against the move while remaining are comfortable with the new charges on cash transactions.

The survey said, “Consumers are of the opinion that instead of reducing the cost of digital transactions, private banks are trying to show the stick to the customer and forcing them to go digital. Consumers are very concerned with the cost of digital transactions and many of them have reported that merchants are still charging 2% additional for debit, credit or wallet transactions.”

About 11,081 citizens voted on the LocalCircles poll.

When asked about charges after four free transactions, a group of 54% said they did not support the move and wanted the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to make banks withdraw the decision immediately.

14% said they will support the move only if cost of cashless transaction is brought down.

HDFC Bank on March 02, 2017, said it would henceforth charge for cash withdrawals and deposits. Other banks like ICICI Bank, Axis Bank and State Bank of India followed suit.

Also Read: Charge on cash deposit: Why blame the banks when RBI approved move

Remaining 30%, however, seemed pretty calm with this decision. 

26% said that these charges don’t matter as four free transactions were enough for them and 4% said that they were anyway cashless.

Many citizens also said that such charges will force them to close their accounts and migrate to other banks.

The survey found that such move is likely to prompt people to withdraw more than their requirements in one go and may actually result in higher magnitude of withdrawals and increased volume of cash transactions.

Earlier LocalCircles survey stated that consumers wants debit card charges at zero level while credit card and wallet charges to be capped around 0.5%.