What is a Basic Service demat Account?

BSDA is a special category demat account which can be opened/ held only by individual investors. BSDA is intended for small retail investors who don’t invest frequently in stocks, bonds, ETFs, mutual funds, etc. The BDSA can be maintained at a minimal cost.

SEBI observed that the majority of DEMAT account holders do not actually use their accounts as much as other regular traders do and still end up paying high AMC to their brokers. So, to help those account holders, SEBI comes up with this type of account.

The one criterion for BSDA is that you should only have one Demat account i.e., BSDA, across all the depositories.

The structure of Account Maintenance Charge (AMC) for BSDA are as follows:

Holding Value of Shares	AMC charges (excluding GST)
Up to ₹50,000	Nil
₹50,001 to ₹2,00,000	₹100
Equal to or more than ₹2,00,001	₹300

The brokerage rate and other charges will remain same for BSDA accounts and regular accounts.

The holding value will be calculated by DP (a broker) on the basis of the Last Traded Price or NAV of securities or units of mutual funds. If the value of holdings exceeds the prescribed limit at any date during the period for which it is charged, the DP may levy charges as applicable to regular accounts (non-BSDA) from that day onwards.

For more info on this, you can refer to the  SEBI notification