State Bank of India (SBI) has slashed its charges for IMPS transactions. The new charges took effect from 15 October, 2017, the bank's website showed. The new changes assume significance as SBI got a lot of flak from customers for increasing the IMPS charges in June. The new charges on the website read: Amount Charges Rs 1000 and below Free Rs 1001 to Rs 10,000 Rs 1 Rs 10,001 to Rs 1 lakh Rs 2 Rs 100,001 to Rs 2 lakh Rs 3 Earlier in June, for transactions below Rs 1 lakh, SBI charged Rs 5 plus service tax. Transfers above Rs 1 lakh and up to Rs 2 lakh were charged Rs 15 plus service tax. For transactions above Rs 2 lakh and up to Rs 5 lakh, the bank charged Rs 25 plus service tax. ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank and Axis Bank have similar charges for IMPS as the above. IMPS saw a 33% increase in the total transactions taking place between August and September 2017. There was a slight increase in the total number of Mobile Money IDs (MMID), according to data published by the National Payments Corporation of India, which owns and operates IMPS. IMPS transaction volumes grew on a monthly basis to 108 million ( 108,003,267 transactions) from 81.1 million transactions (81,101,048 transactions) while the amount transacted increased 48% on a monthly basis to Rs 1,01,621 crore- since the highest in May 2017. The average transaction amount increased by 11% on a monthly basis to…
