BENGALURU: Public sector lenders State Bank of India (SBI) and Bank of Baroda (BoB) have limited the cash withdrawals of customers using micro-ATMs of other banks to just four times a month, in what could cause transactions undertaken through the Aadhaar-enabled Payment System (AePS) route to fall significantly.

While BoB is allowing customers to do four transactions a day, SBI has limited it to just one. SBI account holders who are not part of the government’s direct benefit transfer scheme are allowed to do five transactions a month, three industry sources told ET. These limits only apply in case the customer uses the micro-ATM terminal of another bank.

SBI did not respond to queries.
“As per NPCI advisory, BoB has fixed issuer side limit of four transaction per month by a customer. This has been implemented to protect the interest of financial inclusion customers, the reason behind the move is acquirer banks’ agents indulging in split transactions and as per advisory from NPCI,” said a BoB spokesperson.

In perhaps some early signs of a drop in transactions, AePS recorded 201 million transactions in September, a nearly 9% reduction from the 220 million in July, as per data by the National Payments Corporation of India, which manages the payment network.

Through AePS, depositors use biometric credentials to withdraw cash from retail agents, instead of swiping their debit cards at ATMs