RBI on Monday, April 12th, 2021 said “RTGS service will not be available for all government and private banks from 00:00 hrs to 14.00 hrs on 18th April. The NEFT system will still be operational as was common during this period.”
“A technical upgrade of RTGS targeted to reinforce the resilience and to further improve the Disaster Recovery Time of the RTGS system, is scheduled after the close of business on April 17, 2021” RBI said.
RTGS stands for Real-Time Gross Settlement system which may be described as a transfer system wherein the transfer of cash takes place from one bank to the other bank on a “real-time” and a gross basis.
In its press release RBI states that member banks may inform their customers to plan their payment operations accordingly. RTGS Members will still receive event update(s) through system broadcasts.
RTGS transactions are processed continuously on a one-to-one basis 24×7, 365 days. RTGS facility is most used for high-value transactions in India managed by the Reserve Bank of India. There are more than 100,000 RTGS enabled bank branches in the country.
However, it will affect thousands of individuals on April 18. There are two ways to transfer money if you face an urgent situation on Sunday, April 18:
NEFT
National Electronic Fund Transfer or NEFT is one of the simplest ways to transfer money from one bank to a different because it requires just two things — the account number and IFSC Code of the destination account. NEFT allows customers to transfer funds up to rupees 2 lakh.
IMPS
Apart from NEFT, you can also transfer money via Immediate Payment Service or IMPS. However, it’s noteworthy to say that the transaction limit via IMPS is significantly low and depends on individual banks.
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