RTGS payments to be available 24×7 from 14 December

Dec. 10: The Reserve Bank of India on Wednesday announced that the Real Time Gross Settlement System’ (RTGS) is going to be operational round the clock starting from December 14. With this, India will become part of a small group of countries in the world where RTGS system functions 24×7 throughout the year. RTGS, which started on March 26, 2004 with a soft launch involving four banks, presently handles 6.35 lakh transactions daily for a value of Rs 4.17 lakh crore across 237 participant banks.

“Accordingly, RTGS 24x7x365 will be launched with effect from 00:30 hours on December 14, 2020,” the central bank said in a statement. Earlier, the RBI had decided not to levy charges on transactions through NEFT and RTGS in order to promote digital transactions, and had asked banks to pass on the benefits to customers. RTGS is meant for large-value instantaneous fund transfers, while NEFT is used for fund transfers of up to Rs 2 lakh.

In a similar move in December 2019, the National Electronic Funds Transfer (NEFT) system was made available on a 24x7x365 basis.