Axis Bank to charge for SMS alerts

Mayur.Shetty@timesgroup.com

Mumbai: Axis Bank has revised some of its charges including those for

SMS alerts

following the new regime introduced by the

telecom regulatory authority

.

The bank has said that from July 2021 it will charge customers 25 paise for every SMS alert subject to a maximum of Rs 25 a month. This will not include promotional text messages or messages sent to the customer or the

OTP

that is sent to authenticate transactions. Premium accounts, salary accounts and basic accounts will be spared charges.

In terms of the new regulations, senders of bulk SMS messages will have to first submit a pre-registered template and also subsequent messages will have to match the template failing which the telecom operator will block the messages. The process of authenticating the messages is referred to as ‘scrubbing’.

According to telecom industry sources, the charges imposed by the bank reflect the cost of scrubbing messages. Axis Bank accounts for the highest number of mobile banking transactions in the private sector.

Among other changes the private bank has increased

cash withdrawal fee

, reduced fees for attestation and also increased the

minimum average balance

requirement.


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