Highlights:
- RBI tries to make e-payment more convenient for people
- RBI to now allow round the clock large fund transfers
- Last year RBI allowed 24X7X365 NEFT system
As per the Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, Shaktikanta Das, the customer will soon have the ability to transfer funds through Real-Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) round the clock i.e. 24X7, and the service would be activated in the coming few days.
On Friday, Das said, “The RTGS system will soon be made 24/7 in the next few days and this was announced in the last policy. With this enablement, it is proposed to reduce settlement and default risks in the system by facilitating settlement on all days of the week, instead of five days earlier”.
RTGS allows the transfer of funds on real-time bases to the account of the beneficiary and is used when transferring a large sum of money. What we mean by real time is that the time taken to process the transaction at the time received, while gross settlement means the settlement of the fund transfer instruction which occur individually.
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As of now, RTGS is not available as a 24X7 system to the customers and is only available on the days when most bank branches are functioning including the working Saturdays.
The minimum amount that a customer needs to transfer through RTGS is ₹2 lakh. There is no upper limit.
Recently, the Reserve Bank of India has been trying to make the electronic mode of payments much more convenient for the people as well as businesses. The apex bank, in December 2019, allowed the transfer of funds via the National Electronic Funds Transfer (NEFT) system on a 24x7x365 basis.
Apart from this, the Central bank has also decided to increase the upper limit of the contactless card transactions (payment made without the need of pin number) and recurring payment mandates via bank cards and also Unified Payments Interface (UPI) from ₹ 2,000 to ₹ 5,000.
This increase in the upper limit will come in effect from the 1st of January 2021 and will be left at the discretion of the user.
The governor of the RBI said, this will help boost the adoption of digital payments in the country in a safe and secure manner.
