While digital economy is being pushed by the govt., banks are continuously hitting the pockets of its customers by levying all such unreasonable charges such as those for failed ATM transactions. Such charges vary across banks and to top up this applicable GST rate is also charged to them.

For instance, for every ATM swipe transaction at a PoS or ATM which gets cancelled due to one or another reason, SBI charges Rs. 17 while ICICI and HDFC Bank charge Rs. 25 on transaction cancellation as decline charges.

This exorbitant fees is not justifiable given the case of merchant discount rate or MDR which has now been capped. MDR is the fees charged to merchants for accepting payments through cards.

In this connect, IIT-Bombay professor is quoted as saying in the TOI report, "The present system is highly anti-digital and unnecessarily risky (in terms of fees) for people who have no great savings but live on monthly salary. Such charges only disincentivise and create negatives for digital payments."

He suggested that even if the premise for charges is to check misuse of debit cards, there should still be a floor for two declined merchant transactions in a month due to inadequate balance and thereon the charges can be imposed as penalty.

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