The pensioner remembers the 1970s when Swiss authorities last used negative interest rates to deter investors from using their currency as a safe haven. Then it was instability in the Middle East. This time it is Russia's financial crisis.

"Then, we comforted ourselves by saying, maybe this will do away with inflation," she said. Now she says, "I think the banks have had it too easy by simply parking their money with the SNB, instead of putting it to work in the local economy."

In the 1970s, the Swiss protected savers like Anderegg by applying the charges to non-resident depositors. This time, authorities are trying to protect local people by shielding banks with large mortgage or loan businesses from the negative rates.

Foreign banks that accept overseas deposits seeking a safe haven in Switzerland are likely to be hit hardest, according to bankers and economists.

Credit Suisse (>> Credit Suisse Group AG), UBS (>> UBS Group AG) and cooperative bank Raiffeissen have said they will not be affected by Thursday's move. Local-government backed Zuercher Kantonalbank said it would refuse, or impose harsher conditions, on short-term deposits from banks that might otherwise have put cash with central bank.

Berne-based retail bank PostFinance said a small part of the 40 billion francs it holds with the SNB is subject to the penalties, but it had no plans currently to charge clients for deposits.

Instead the SNB's decision is aimed at the foreign-owned banks that account for nearly half of they banks in the country.

"The measure is meant mainly as a signal to not hold Swiss franc deposits," Reto Foellmi, professor of international economics at the University of St. Gallen, making clear the measure was directed at foreign banks in Switzerland.

HSBC (>> HSBC Holdings plc) and Deutsche Bank (>> Deutsche Bank AG) -- two of the largest foreign-owned banks in Switzerland -- declined to comment.

The big Swiss banks are unlikely to become magnets for foreign capital because they have penalized their clients for holding large cash deposits since 2011, when the SNB first introduced measures to cap the value of the Swiss franc as investors sought a safe haven from the euro crisis.

The SNB does not say how much foreign banks or other financial intermediaries such as securities dealers or insurers hold in cash deposits with the central bank, which stood at 313 billion Swiss francs last week.

(Reporting By Katharina Bart; Additional reporting by Joshua Franklin, Paul Arnold, Silke Koltrowitz; Editing by Giles Elgood)

By Katharina Bart