More than thousand branches of State Bank of India are undergoing changed names and IFSC codes in major cities including New Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai, Kolkata and Lucknow with all preparation to have no impact on the payment services for customers via cheque RTGS, NEFT or IMPS methods.
The country’s biggest lender has nearly 23,000 branches across India and lately it has merged five of its associates. About 1,300 of the branches will be affected with the new move.
State Bank of Bikaner and Jaipur, State Bank of Travancore, State Bank of Patiala, State Bank of Mysore and State Bank of Hyderabad were merged into SBI in April this year. Bhartiya Mahila Bank was also merged.
SBI’s managing director for retail and digital banking Praveen Gupta said, “Some of our old associate branches are getting merged with SBI branches. When the merger happens, the IFSC codes get changed.”
IFSC (Indian Financial System Code) is an 11-digit alpha-numeric code that is used to identify all the participating branches in fund transfer system that is regulated by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI).
IFSC code is important mentioning while transferring fund through RTGS, NEFT or IMPS methods. The same is also printed on cheque leaves.
Gupta added all the customers of the affected branches have been informed about the move and the bank has internally mapped the new IFSC codes too.
He assured customers will not face problems in money transfer through the said methods even if the old IFSC code is used initially as the branches will take care of those at their end.
Meanwhile, SBI has put up the list of affected branches with their new IFSC codes on their website and customers can check the details from the SBI Branch Locator web page.
Apart from this, SBI is also redesigning its window envelopes used in dispatching tax refund cheque of customers in order to hide the contact and PAN numbers.
As of now these details are visible to anyone handling the envelopes and the issue was raised by an activist last year.
RBI has alleged SBI is violating its direction on ‘protection of customer’s information.’
