State Bank of India Children’s Savings Accounts

State Bank of India Children’s Savings Accounts

State Bank offers two children’s accounts, Pehla Kadam and Pehli Udaan. Let us look at them.

Pehla Kadam

The account is meant for all children and can be opened with jointly with a parent or guardian.

Features

  • The account does not have any minimum balance requirements
  • The daily transaction limit is capped at Rs. 5,000 while transactions such as bill payment, prepaid mobile top-ups are limited to Rs. 2,000 (this is within the Rs. 5,000 limit)
  • SBI offers an auto-sweep option with this account called SBI Multi Option Deposit Scheme (MODS). If the accountholders opt for this, then any amount above Rs. 20,000 in the account is put in a term deposit. The MOD is initially for a sum of Rs. 10,000 and in Rs. 1,000 multiples thereafter (see note 1 also)
  • The maximum balance that can be kept in the Pehla Kadam account is Rs. 10 lakh
  • Kids get a specially branded chequebooks and passbook in addition to a debit card personalised with their own photo

Notes:

  1. In the auto-sweep (MOD) facility, it is not clarified on the website if the account needs to have Rs. 30k so that it has Rs. 20k left after the Rs. 10k is taken for the MOD scheme; or if Rs. 10k can be put in a MOD even if only Rs. 20k was present in the account (this means after the amount is withdrawn for the deposit, the account will have Rs. 10k left as balance). If you are confused reading this, then don?t worry, so are we!
  2. The links to the specific accounts may not work. The above data was taken from internet searches. We have put the links here in the hope that they work some day. Even the WayBack Machine shows an error when we tried to pull a page from July 5, 2017

Pehli Udaan

The account is meant for children above 10 years of age who can open and operate the account on their own.

Features

  • As mentioned, any kid above the age of 10 years who can read and write can open the account in their own name without the need for any parent or guardian
  • Except for the age criteria, the other features of the Pehli Udaan account are same as that for the Pehla Kadam account

Reference Facts

  • State Bank of India Website: sbi.co.in and onlinesbi.com (net banking)
  • Headquarters: Mumbai, Maharashtra
  • Call Centre Number: 1800 425 3800, 1800 112 211, 1800 110 009 (pensioners only)