New Delhi : The real time gross settlement system (RTGS) facility for high value transactions will be available 24 hours a day from today. With this, India will join some of the countries in the world where RTGS operates seven days and 24 hours.
The Reserve Bank of India announced in October that the RTGS facility would be available round the clock on all days of the year. Reserve Bank Governor Shashikanta Das tweeted, RTGS will be operational round the clock from 12:30 pm on December 13. Congratulations to the RBI team, IFTAS and service partners for making this possible. With this, India has joined some countries of the world that operate the RTGS system round the clock throughout the year. Nearly a year ago, the Reserve Bank made the operations of NEFT round the clock. NEFT is a popular method of small value transactions.
RTGS started operations on March 26, 2004 with four banks. Currently, there are 6.35 lakh transactions worth Rs 4.17 lakh crore between 237 partner banks daily. The average transaction size on RTGS in November 2020 was Rs 57.96 lakh. In this way it has actually proved to be a better system of large value payments. RTGS uses ISO 20022, the best messaging standard for financial transactions. In RTGS, a confirmation facility to access the beneficiary’s account is also available. Initially, the Reserve Bank did not levy any charges on transactions through the NEFT and RTGS systems. This step was taken to encourage digital transactions in the country. Apart from this, the Reserve Bank had asked banks to give its benefits to customers. Now the Reserve Bank levies minimum fees on banks for transactions through RTGS and NEFT. At the same time banks charge customers.
