What is an Online Savings Account?

A Digital Blogger | | Investing | No Comments

In today’s reasonably regulated financial space in India, it is troublesome to keep your money in the hard cash format. In fact, there are way too many reasons not to keep your money in cash and put it in a bank account.

Some of the prominent reasons being:

There is no capital appreciation as idle cash adds no value to itself. It lowers its own value with inflation adding on top of it.
It is tempting to spend money that you have at your disposal in cash format.
Cash can be stolen or may get damaged in fire/water.
Potential inconvenience caused due to any sudden government regulations.

Thus, it makes total sense to open a bank account and keep your hard-earned money in such an account. Within different bank account formats, Online Savings account is one of the most comfortable options you may go for.

Some of the top benefits of choosing and opening a savings account are:

Easy access & highly liquid mode i.e. you may choose to withdraw the money at any given point in time using any withdrawal option such as ATM, Cheque, DD etc.
Online banking makes bank transfers and payments easy and convenient. These payments can be done on your mobile or laptop.
You earn interest on the principal you keep depositing in your savings bank account. The interest rate may vary from 4% to 7%.
If you travel abroad, some banks also provide an International debit card that allows you to withdraw cash in those countries as well.
Few banks offer a discount on the locker fees for people who open a savings account with the bank and keep a minimum account balance.
Above all, it keeps your money safe from any potential threats.

Zero Balance Savings Account

With an Online savings account – the urban population, whose major chunk performs transactions in online mode, can connect very easily and thus, it works as a utility product for them.

Furthermore, there is a general concern among people that a bank account requires you to keep a minimum deposit otherwise the bank may levy some sort of penalty or any other hidden charge against their account.

This assumption is not completely wrong. In fact, there are a few banking companies who regularly do that. The worst part is most of the times, it is not even communicated to the account holders through any medium.

This is where zero balance savings account come into the picture. Such bank accounts do not require you to put even a single paisa as the minimum account balance and you may choose to withdraw any amount whatsoever at any given point in time. However, there are only a limited number of banks who actually provide that.

Thus, make sure to have an in-depth understanding of the online savings account you are looking to open and get all sorts of charges from an official email id of the bank. Some banks provide all sorts of charges on their website as well. Otherwise, you also get stuck in paying such casual charges levied randomly.

How to Open an Online Savings Account?

In case you are looking to open an online savings account, with the advent of online technology, it has become very easy to open one.

The banks that are relatively more tech-savvy allow you to provide all the requisite details online. All you need to do is provide initial details such as PAN number, Aadhar number, Phone etc.

Once the above-mentioned details are verified, you will be required to enter basic personal information such as address, profession, income slab etc. Post submission of these details, all you need to confirm the entered information. That is pretty much it and your account information will be sent to you. The bank may also choose to call you and provide all the information you may need to get started.

The whole essence of an online savings account is to make sure that the user has to perform minimal manual effort.

On top of that, few banks have started providing some unique offers with such zero savings accounts such as movie tickets, grocery offers and so on. All and all, such a bank account can directly be related with what a young urban consumer may require. Thus, in case you are someone who connects with such an account, feel free to check out some of the prominent banks that offer such services.

Summary

Reviewer

A Digital Blogger

Date

2018-07-02