The Real Time Gross Settlement System (RTGS) for high-value transactions will become available round-the-clock from today (December 14), making India one of the few countries in the world to operate the system 24X7.
RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das announced that the RTGS facility would become operational 24X7 from 12:30 am on Monday. "RTGS facility becomes operational 24X7 from 12.30 am tomorrow. Congratulations to the teams from RBI, Indian Financial Technology and Allied Services (IFTAS), and the service partners who made this possible," Das had tweeted on Sunday.
In October, the RBI had announced that RTGS will be available round-the-clock on all days of the year. RTGS facility comes within a year of RBI operationalising NEFT 24x7. NEFT is a popular mode for small-value transactions.
RTGS, which began its operations 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.
"Round the clock availability of RTGS will provide extended flexibility to businesses for effecting payments and will enable the introduction of additional settlement cycles in ancillary payment systems. This can also be leveraged to enhance operations of Indian financial markets and cross-border payments," RBI had said last week.
RTGS is meant for large-value instantaneous fund transfers, while NEFT is used for fund transfers of up to Rs 2 lakh.
RTGS shall be available for customer and inter-bank transactions round the clock, except for the interval between ‘end-of-day’ and ‘start-of-day’ processes, whose timings would be duly broadcasted through the RTGS system.
RTGS uses ISO 20022 format which is the best-in-class messaging standard for financial transactions. The feature of positive confirmation for credit to beneficiary accounts is also available in RTGS.
The average ticket size for RTGS in November 2020 was Rs 57.96 lakh, making it a truly large-value payment system.
Difference between NEFT and RTGS: NEFT is an electronic fund transfer system in which the transactions received up to a particular time are processed in batches. Contrary to this, in RTGS, the transactions are processed continuously on a transaction by transaction basis throughout the RTGS business hours.
(Inputs from PTI)
