The largest lender of the country, State Bank of India has started charging customers for passbook updation in non home branches. Non home branches refer to any branch other than the one where the customer has his account.

The service is free only in the home branch and every other branch will charge Rs 10 every time the service is availed.

"There is a cost involved to everything. As it is, SBI branches are crowded. In a non-home branch, if a huge crowd comes in just to update the passbook, then the customers of that branch will never get a chance to go to that counter," said A Krishna Kumar, deputy managing director (information technology), SBI.

BA Prabhakar, executive director, Bank of India, said, "We will not charge the customer for making an update on the passbook from a non-home branch. We do not find any reason to add a cost to such activities. There is not much of any additional cost which we are bearing."

"Updates in a passbook are a very normal service to be rendered to a customer. We do not see any reason to charge the customer for the same," said S Govindan, general manager (personal banking and operations), Union Bank of India.