Withdraw cash at Shopping Counters

Now you can withdraw cash at shops (point of sale). Yup one more gift from Reserve Bank of India to banking customers. When I was in US I noticed that we can have a cash withdraw (they called it cashback) at the sales counters while swiping my card. Till date there is no such provision in INDIA. But now Reserve Bank of India, on 22 July 2009 issued a notification which will enable consumer to take cash upto 1000Rs/day at sales counters.

Well this is indeed a very encouraging step for banks because this will increase accessibility to customers. As per the data published in RBI notification “As on May 31, 2009, number of ATMs and POS terminals in the country stood at 44,857 and 4,70,237 respectively”. So obviously consumers will have 10 times more accessibility to cash that before. One thing which is most exciting about this notification is the inclusion of term that “The facility is available irrespective of whether the card holder makes a purchase or not”. So, now this is upto the banks to do the due diligence and start the service.

Let`s have a look on RBI circular Text

Webpage
http://www.rbi.org.in/scripts/NotificationUser.aspx?Id=5184&Mode=0

PDF Format
http://rbidocs.rbi.org.in/rdocs/notification/PDFs/CWCI220709.pdf

The only thing which is not clear is about the charges. Will there be any charge or fee for using the service or it will be free as the use of ATM (Automatic Teller Machines).