A Public Provident Fund is a fixed income saving scheme wherein you can invest for a long term and get a guaranteed rate of return on your investment. A PPF Account can be opened easily with an authorized bank or post office and then you can deposit money into the account for saving tax as well as for building a secured corpus for your financial goals.
Opening of a PPF Account can be done online as well as offline. You can open a PPF account with a bank or a post office. Usually, almost all reputed banks allow you to open a PPF Account with them.
These are some of the common PPF Account opening banks. There are other banks too and if you hold a savings account with another bank which is not on the list, you can find out whether the bank is a PPF Account opening bank or not.
Among the list of banks offering PPF Accounts, some banks allow you to open the account online or offline while others allow only offline account opening applications.
To open the PPF Account, here are the steps which you should follow –
Many leading banks like SBI, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, Axis Bank, etc. allow you to open a PPF Account online from your home or office. Under the online mode of opening the PPF Account, you don’t have to visit the branch and fill up an application form.
The application form can be filled up online itself and submitted to the bank along with your KYC documents. The first deposit to open the PPF Account can also be paid online along with the application.
Once your application is reviewed and verified, the bank would open your PPF account online.
You can choose any bank from the PPF Account opening banks but you would be allowed to open a PPF Account provided the following eligibility parameters are met –
You can choose a bank from the list of banks offering PPF Account and open an account online or offline as allowed by the bank that you choose.
However, when opening a PPF Account, the following points should be kept in mind –
During a financial year, the minimum deposit required to keep the PPF Account active is Rs.500. You can make this deposit in one lump sum or in instalments during the financial year.
In case of deposits in instalment, you can make an unlimited number of deposits in one financial year provided that the minimum amount of deposit is Rs.50 per instalment and the aggregate amount of instalment deposits is Rs.1.5 lakhs in a year
Invest in a PPF scheme to earn guaranteed returns and choose any of the above-mentioned banks to open a PPF Account with. The account opening formality is simple and once opened you can invest over a long term period and build up a good corpus without fearing market volatility.
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