The Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) mechanism will operational 24*7 from 12:30 am, December 14, Shaktikanta Das, Governor of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), said on Sunday.
He made the announcement through Twitter, clarifying in his second tweet that the service will start from 12:30 am tonight, and not 12:30 pm, as he said in his first tweet.
RTGS facility becomes operational 24X7 from 12.30 pm tonight. Congratulations to the teams from RBI, IFTAS and the service partners who made this possible.
— Shaktikanta Das (@DasShaktikanta) December 13, 2020
Sorry for the typo error. It’s 12.30 am tonight.
— Shaktikanta Das (@DasShaktikanta) December 13, 2020
In October, the RBI announced that the RTGS system used for large-value transactions will be a round-the-clock service from December. This is in an attempt to further the volume of digital payments in India, and the country will be among the select few in the world to make this amendment in the RTGS system.
The RTGS facility enables large-value bank transfers from one account to another, with the minimum amount to be remitted being Rs 2 lakh. While there is no upper limit of remissions as per RBI's FAQs, banks usually do have an upper ceiling of Rs 10 lakh.
As of now, the RTGS facility can be availed by customers from 7.00 am to 6.00 pm on all working days of a week, barring the second and fourth Saturdays of each month.
Last year, the RBI had also made the services of the National Electronic Fund Transfer (NEFT) be available 24*7. NEFT is predominantly used for small-value operations.
RTGS had started on March 26, 2004, involving just four banks. Today, however, there are 237 participating banks and the service handles 6.35 lakh transactions daily for a value of about Rs 4.17 lakh crore.