New Delhi, September 3 (TNA) State Bank of India (SBI) has announced a significant change for salary account holders that will make using other banks’ ATMs costlier from October 1, 2026, by cutting the monthly free transaction limit at non-SBI ATMs and ADWMs from 10 to 5. The move, which applies across all SBI Salary Package Account variants, means customers who frequently withdraw cash or check balances at other banks’ machines will start paying per-transaction fees much sooner in the month, even though the fee per transaction itself has not been increased.
Under the revised rules, both financial transactions such as cash withdrawals and non-financial transactions like balance enquiries and mini statements will be counted together within the same five-transaction monthly quota when SBI salary account debit cards are used at other banks’ ATMs or Automated Deposit cum Withdrawal Machines (ADWMs).
Once a user exhausts these five free transactions in a calendar month, each additional cash withdrawal at another bank’s ATM will attract a charge of ₹23 plus applicable GST, while each additional non-financial transaction will cost ₹11 plus GST, as per the existing fee structure that remains unchanged. Transactions at SBI’s own ATMs and ADWMs are not affected by this specific change, and the bank has not altered the free transaction limits for regular savings or other non-salary accounts in this update.
For many salaried customers, especially those in cities where SBI’s own ATM network is sparse or for employees whose payroll accounts are tied to specific branches, the reduction from 10 to 5 free external ATM transactions can translate into a noticeable increase in monthly banking costs if usage patterns remain the same.
A salary account holder who currently makes, say, eight transactions a month at other banks’ ATMs pays nothing today, but after October 1 the same behaviour will result in three chargeable transactions, each adding ₹23 plus GST to the monthly outgo. Because routine balance checks and mini statements also count towards the limit, even modest users can find themselves crossing the free threshold earlier than before.
Banking experts and personal finance analysts suggest that SBI customers can mitigate the impact by consciously tracking their non-SBI ATM usage, consolidating cash withdrawals and balance checks into fewer visits, and relying more on digital channels such as UPI, NEFT, RTGS and mobile banking for payments and transfers, which remain outside the scope of this ATM-limit change. Where feasible, using SBI’s own ATMs will also help avoid the additional charges, since the new restriction applies only to transactions at other banks’ machines.
The revised rules come into force from October 1, 2026, and have been widely reported across Hindi and English business media following internal circulars and updates shared by the country’s largest public sector lender.