14 Ways to Avoid Unnecessary Charges towards Bank Services
By Anupama Deshpande | May 15, 2018

Banks offer you a wide range of products and services including savings account, loans, credit cards, debit cards, and many other financial facilities.

Banks provide you many services and facilities but as a customer you should always be very watchful for any unnecessary bank charges levied by your bank. If the charges are genuine and correctly levied then there is no issue but if you feel them unnecessary, you need to talk to your banker. It is very important for you to get detailed information from your bank regarding all the bank charges while opening your account.

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There are various ways by which you can easily avoid unnecessary charges towards bank services. I have explained 14 such ways as follows:

Research and open your account where minimum service charges are applicable. There are several accounts which offer no charges of RTGS/ NEFT. Many accounts offer more free monthly usage of withdraw amount from ATM.

Calculate monthly cash expenses in advance and withdraw required amount from ATM. Avoid using ATM for cash withdrawal above 3 times in a month otherwise you need to pay charges for the same.

Net banking services allow you to carry out banking transactions online using your computer conveniently from your office or residence. Net banking facilities provide you with the convenience of online banking instantly at ease. You can access your bank accounts 24x7 from anywhere. You can use it to avoid unnecessary delay caused by physical transactions.

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Use your Credit Card and Debit Card to pay bills or merchant expenses. It is a cashless way which is less risky too. If you make use of paying these items through cash, you may have to withdraw from ATM more times than allowed free transactions by bank which may cause paying off more bank charges.

Mobile Wallet allows user to store money in the virtual wallet and use this money in making payment through mobile or tablet. It is a payment service through which one can receive and send money via mobile. You should use mobile wallet such as Mobikwik or Paytm for making payments. Through mobile wallet, instead of using your physical plastic card to make purchases, you can pay with your smart mobile phone or tablets. They also offer cash back and various discounts on transactions done through them.

Banks prescribe to maintain a fixed average minimum monthly or quarterly balance in your account. If you don't maintain the required minimum balance in your account, bank will levy charges for non maintenance of minimum average balance. That is why you must maintain Minimum Average Balance in your bank account.

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Request your bank to send account statement by email instead of physical copy. Banks levy charges to provide physical statement but do not charge anything for providing the same electronically.

Do not ever issue a cheque of more amount than balance available in your account. If you issue a cheque of more amount than balance available in your account, it will get bounced and bank will charge heavy penalty for cheque dishonour. Further, it will create problem for you as it is treated as criminal offence under NGI Act.

You can conduct financial transactions through your mobile even if you are there in remote area. Banks provide their Mobile Apps for conducting such transaction at ease.

If you want to request for stop payment of a cheque, you must request this through online request instead of placing this request offline as banks charge if you use offline route.

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You should use the facility of auto debit for making payments of your regular installments such as Loan EMIs, Mutual Funds SIPs, etc. In this way you can save charges because there may be some mistakes while writing a cheque such as spelling mistake, mistake in date or amount mismatch in words & figures, etc. You can avoid all these items by simply giving an auto debit instructions.

There is a facility in the credit card of withdrawing cash but you should avoid using credit card for this purpose. You will be charged instantly with the day you withdraw the cash using credit card and these charges are very high i.e. in the range of 24% to 36% p.a. So try avoid cash withdrawals using Credit Card.

Do not forget to pay the credit card bills on time. There are heavy interest charged for the delay in making payment of credit card bills which is upto 36% p.a. For your convenience, you can issue standing instructions to the bank for paying off credit card bills.

You are free to negotiate your bank to waive some of the bank charges. Bank is likely to be ready to waive such charges as the banks don't want to lose long-term customers over insignificant amounts. So instead of paying any bank charges immediately, you should try to talk to your banker and negotiate over waiving these charges.

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