RTGS operating hours to be impacted! Check date, time to plan your payment operations

The NEFT system will continue to be operational as usual during this period.

Real Time Gross Settlement System (RTGS) users will not be able to avail the services for a few hours on Sunday, April 18, 2021. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has asked banks that a technical upgrade of RTGS is scheduled after the close of business on April 17, 2021. Accordingly, RTGS service will not be available from 00:00 hrs to 14.00 hrs on Sunday, April 18, 2021. The up-gradation is being done to enhance the resilience and to further improve the Disaster Recovery Time of the RTGS system.

However, the NEFT system will continue to be operational as usual during this period i.e. from 00:00 hrs to 14.00 hrs on Sunday, April 18, 2021.

Earlier, the large-value RTGS system was available for customers from 7.00 am to 6.00 pm on all working days of a week (except the 2nd and 4th Saturdays of the month). But, since December 2020, the Real Time Gross Settlement System was made available 24x7x365. The National Electronic Funds Transfer (NEFT) system was made available on a 24x7x365 basis from December 2019 and the system has been operating smoothly since then.

RTGS is the continuous (real-time) settlement of funds transfers individually on an order by order basis (without netting). ‘Real Time’ means the processing of instructions at the time they are received rather than at some later time; ‘Gross Settlement’ means the settlement of funds transfer instructions occurs individually (on an instruction by instruction basis).

Also, in order to provide an impetus to the digital funds movement, RBI had already decided to do away with the charges levied by it for transactions processed in the RTGS and National Electronic Funds Transfer (NEFT) systems.

So, if you have any payments to be routed through RTGS, you may plan them accordingly.