Guide — Indian banks
Most Indian banks default to SMS and push. Email alerts are usually available too, and they are the version your inbox can actually keep. Here is where the setting lives at HDFC, ICICI, SBI, Axis, Kotak, and fifteen more.
Last reviewed 28 September 2026. Every setting below lives inside your own bank — Numero never asks for banking credentials.
By Rohtash Singh and Taniya Das, co-founders of Numero
Indian banks have spent a decade optimising for SMS. It is instant and it works on any phone, but it is also the worst possible place to keep a financial record — SMS cannot be searched properly, cannot be exported, gets truncated, and is increasingly rationed. Several banks now charge per SMS or have stopped sending them for small UPI payments entirely.
Email alerts solve that. They are free at effectively every Indian bank that offers them, they carry more detail than a 160-character SMS, and they land somewhere searchable that you already keep for years. The catch is that almost nobody turns them on, because the setting is buried under a different name at every bank — InstaAlerts at HDFC, IndusAlerts at IndusInd, FedAlerts at Federal Bank, a plain alert subscription at Kotak.
This page lists where that setting lives, bank by bank, and is honest about the banks where per-transaction email simply is not offered. Where a bank is SMS-first, the guide says so and points you at the e-statement instead, rather than sending you hunting for a menu that does not exist.
Do this first
The menu names change by bank and by country. These four decisions do not — and they are what separates an inbox that happens to receive bank mail from one that is a usable financial record.
01
Alerts are only useful if they all land in the same place. Pick the Gmail or Outlook address you actually read, make sure the bank has it as your registered email, and use that same address everywhere — cards, accounts, wallets, and merchant receipts.
02
Most banks enable security and fraud alerts by default and leave ordinary spending alerts off. Switch on alerts for card purchases, transfers out, transfers in, and payments — those are the ones that describe your actual spending.
03
Many banks only alert above a threshold — commonly ₹5,000 in India or a default like S$100 or S$500 at DBS. Anything under the threshold silently disappears. Set the minimum to the lowest value the bank allows so small, frequent spending is captured too.
04
Alert settings are almost always per-account, not per-customer. A savings account, a second savings account, each credit card, and each loan usually need their own pass. Do the whole list once and you never think about it again.
How to read this
You can switch per-transaction email alerts on yourself, from online banking or the app.
Email alerts exist, but registration usually runs through phone banking, customer care, or a branch form rather than a self-serve toggle.
Real-time alerts are push or SMS only. There is no per-transaction email to turn on — rely on statements and merchant receipts instead.
The reliable email is the statement or advice, not a per-transaction alert. Turn on e-statements and let merchant receipts cover the detail.
Full walkthroughs
Where we have bank-specific detail worth the space — a named threshold, a published sender address, a documented delay — there is a step-by-step walkthrough with an annotated illustration of the screen you are looking for.
Bank by bank
Banks rename and rearrange these menus constantly, so this guide gives you the feature name the bank uses and the section it sits under rather than a click-by-click path that breaks on the next redesign. If the screen has moved, search your bank’s help centre for the feature name in bold.
17 banks
These are the most self-serve of the lot. In almost every case the alert screen is somewhere under service requests or profile settings in net banking, and the same screen exists in the mobile app.
Look for InstaAlerts
Online banking
NetBanking — the InstaAlerts entry point sits in the top-right of the NetBanking dashboard. Pick the account, then choose which alerts you want and whether they arrive by SMS, email, or both.
Mobile app
HDFC Bank MobileBanking app — under account services, look for InstaAlerts.
Look for Alerts / Mobile Alerts facility
Online banking
Internet Banking — under customer service and service requests, find the registration screen for account alerts. Alerts go to the mobile number and email you register there.
Mobile app
iMobile Pay — under services, look for the alerts or subscription screen.
Look for SMS Banking alerts / e-advice
Online banking
Internet Banking — alert preferences sit under the services or profile section, tied to the registered email and mobile on your account.
Mobile app
Axis Mobile — under services or profile.
Look for Email & SMS Alert subscription
Online banking
Net Banking — alert preferences live under profile or settings, in the alerts and notifications area.
Mobile app
Kotak mobile app — under profile or settings, in notifications.
Look for IndusAlerts
Online banking
Net Banking — under the alerts or service request section.
Mobile app
IndusMobile — under services.
Look for Transaction alerts
Online banking
Net banking — under profile and communication preferences.
Mobile app
IDFC FIRST Bank app — under profile or settings, in notification preferences.
Look for SMS Banking / alert registration
Online banking
Net banking — under service requests.
Mobile app
YES Bank app — under services.
Look for FedAlerts / Email Alert Services
Online banking
FedNet — under services or requests.
Mobile app
FedMobile — under services.
Look for Transaction alerts
Online banking
NetBanking — under the alerts or service request section. RBL also keeps an Inbox in NetBanking for the bank's own notifications.
Mobile app
RBL MoBank — under services or settings.
Public sector banks lean harder on SMS than on email, and several still register alerts through a branch form or an SMS keyword. Email statements are usually the most dependable email you can turn on here — and merchant receipts fill in the rest.
Look for SMS alerts / e-statement
Online banking
YONO 2.0 has merged the old OnlineSBI portal and the YONO app into one platform. Alert and statement preferences sit under service requests.
Mobile app
YONO SBI — under service request, where you can manage SMS alerts and e-statements, and edit the email ID on your profile.
Look for SMS alerts / e-statement
Online banking
PNB One and internet banking — under service requests.
Mobile app
PNB One — under services.
Look for SMS Alert Facility / bob World alerts
Online banking
bob World Internet Banking — the alert subscription screen lets you subscribe or unsubscribe per account.
Mobile app
bob World app — under services.
Look for SMS alerts
Online banking
Canara ai1 / net banking — under services.
Mobile app
Canara ai1 — under services.
Look for SMS alerts / e-statement
Online banking
Union Bank net banking — under service requests.
Mobile app
Union Bank Vyom — under services.
Cards and payment apps are where most Indian spending actually happens, and they are the easiest sources to overlook. A card issued by a bank is usually a separate alert setup from the bank account itself.
Look for E-statement and transaction alerts
Online banking
sbicard.com — statement preferences let you choose the e-statement option so statements arrive at your email ID.
Mobile app
SBI Card app — under statements or profile.
Look for Card alerts / Manage alerts
Online banking
Online Account — under Account Management, in the alerts submenu (named 'Alerts & Preferences' in some regions, 'Alerts, Communications & Privacy' in others), then Card Alerts.
Mobile app
Amex App — Account, then your card under Manage Card, then Notifications under Preferences. This controls push only, not email.
Look for Payment receipts by email
Online banking
Managed in the app rather than on the web.
Mobile app
Profile or settings, in notifications.
Make sure they arrive
The most common outcome of enabling bank alerts is that they get filed into spam, Promotions, or an address nobody reads, and the whole exercise quietly fails.
01
Add the bank's alert sender to your contacts. Banks send alerts from a dedicated address — Wells Fargo publishes alerts@notify.wellsfargo.com and UOB publishes unialerts@uobgroup.com, and both recommend adding the sender to your address book. It is the single most effective way to keep alerts out of spam.
02
Check spam and junk once, then correct it. If an alert is already sitting in spam, mark it as not spam rather than just moving it. That teaches the filter; dragging the message does not.
03
In Gmail, check the Promotions and Updates tabs. Bank alerts frequently land in Updates. A filter that applies 'never send to spam' and 'mark as important' to the bank's sender domain fixes this permanently.
04
Do not set a rule that auto-archives or auto-deletes bank mail. Plenty of people mute alert threads to reduce noise and then have no record at all. Keep the mail and let it be organized instead.
05
Verify it worked with a small real transaction. Buy something inexpensive, then confirm the alert arrived in the inbox you chose. An alert setting that was saved but never delivered is the most common failure here.
06
Never act on a link inside an alert email. Genuine alerts tell you what happened; they do not ask you to log in, confirm details, or enter an OTP. If an email asks for any of that, open your bank's app directly instead.
If your bank won’t email
Plenty of banks — every app-first bank, and several large high street names — simply do not send per-transaction email. That is a product decision on their side, not a setting you have failed to find, and no amount of digging will produce one.
It matters less than it sounds. A bank alert tells you an amount left your account at a merchant whose name is frequently a payment processor rather than the shop. A merchant receipt tells you what you bought, the tax, the order number, the refund status, and the return deadline — and it arrives by email whether or not your bank sends anything at all.
Then what
Once alerts and receipts land reliably in one inbox, Numero reads what you authorize and organizes it — merchants normalized, subscriptions detected, refunds tracked to completion, duplicates flagged. No bank connection, no credentials, no screen scraping.
Numero never asks for net banking passwords, card numbers, CVVs, or OTPs, and there is nowhere in the product to enter them. Everything here is a setting you change inside your own bank.
Numero connects to Gmail or Outlook with read-only authorization, and you can disconnect any inbox at any time from Settings.
Numero stores the structured facts it extracts — merchant, amount, date, category — and never the original email body or attachments.
Questions
No, and this is the part most guides get wrong. Private banks — HDFC, ICICI, Axis, Kotak, IndusInd, IDFC FIRST, Federal — generally offer per-transaction email alerts you can enable yourself. Public sector banks lean much harder on SMS, and at several of them the dependable email is the e-statement rather than a per-transaction alert. Where that is the case, this guide says so instead of inventing a menu path.
Email alerts are free at the banks that offer them — HDFC states InstaAlerts by email are at no extra cost, and Kotak positions email and in-app push as the free alternatives to chargeable SMS. SMS alerts are a different story: PNB charges a small quarterly fee on most account types, and Kotak and HDFC have both moved to per-SMS pricing for some alert categories. Switching to email usually reduces what you pay, not what you get.
Almost certainly a threshold. Many Indian banks only alert above a minimum — ₹5,000 is a very common default at SBI and for some Axis value-added alerts — and HDFC has stopped sending SMS for UPI payments up to ₹100. Everything below the threshold happens silently. Find the minimum amount field in your alert settings and set it to the lowest value the bank allows.
Work through four things in order. First, check spam and the Gmail Promotions and Updates tabs — bank alert senders land there routinely. Second, confirm the email address on file with the bank is still one you read; a stale address is the single most common cause. Third, check whether the alert is per-account and whether you ever enabled it on that particular account or card. Fourth, check whether a threshold was reset during an app update.
Yes. An alert is outbound-only — it tells you something happened. It does not create a way into your account, and enabling it does not change your login, card, or UPI security. The real risk sits elsewhere: phishing emails that imitate alerts. A genuine bank alert never asks you to log in, confirm card details, or enter an OTP. If an email asks for any of that, ignore the link and open your bank's own app.
UPI apps are push-first and generally do not email you a receipt for every payment, so the email trail comes from the bank debit behind the payment rather than the app. That makes the bank-level alert the one that matters. Merchant receipts also help more than people expect: Swiggy, Amazon, Zomato, and IRCTC all email a receipt regardless of how you paid, and those carry line-item detail no UPI notification ever includes.
No. Numero never asks for bank credentials, card numbers, OTPs, or net banking access, and there is nowhere in the product to enter them. Numero connects to Gmail or Outlook with read-only authorization and reads only the messages you have authorized it to look at. It stores structured facts — merchant, amount, date, category — and never keeps the original email body or attachments. You can disconnect an inbox at any time.
Other guide
The same guide for US, UK, EU, Canada, Australia, UAE, and Singapore banks — plus which neobanks have no email alerts at all.
