RTGS Facility To Be Unavailable For 14 Hours On April 18; How It Will Affect You

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Monday announced that the money transfer facility, Real Time Gross Settlement System (RTGS), will be unavailable for 14 hours from 00:00 to 14:00 hours on Sunday, April 18, in lieu of a technical upgrade to enhance the resilience of the system.

The country’s central bank and regulatory body under the jurisdiction of Ministry of Finance, Government of Indiain a press release said, "A technical upgrade of RTGS, targeted to enhance the resilience and to further improve the Disaster Recovery Time of the RTGS system, is scheduled after the close of business of April 17, 2021.”

“Accordingly, RTGS service will not be available from 00:00 hrs to 14.00 hrs on Sunday, April 18, 2021," the release further mentioned.

https://www.rbi.org.in/Scripts/BS_PressReleaseDisplay.aspx?prid=51409

The RBI further clarified that the other payment system, the National Electronic Funds Transfer (NEFT) will continue to be operational during this period. The Central bank has also asked its member banks to notify their customers, who can plan their payment operations accordingly. RBI also said that RTGS members will continue to receive event update/s through system broadcasts.

According to a Business Standard report, the RBI in a major move last week decided to permit payment system operators to take direct membership of Centralised Payment System (CPS), which is similar to RTGS and NEFT. Earlier, the new CPS’ membership was limited for entities other than banks are so far limited to banks, with a small number of exceptions, such as select development financial institutions and clearing corporations.

The facility is expected to minimise settlement risk in the financial system and enhance digital financial services reach to all user segments. However, afew entities will not be eligible for any liquidity facility from the RBI to facilitate settlement of their transactions in these CPS, the report further cited.

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