NEFT service will not be available for 14 hours on May 23: RBI

Share

Tweet

Share

Share

Email

Comments

The National Electronic Funds Transfer (NEFT) service for fund transfers will not be available for 14 hours on May 23, the RBI said.

“A technical upgrade of NEFT, targeted to improve the performance and resilience, is scheduled after the end of business on May 22, 2021. Therefore, NEFT service will not be available from 00:01 hrs to 14:00 hrs on Sunday, May 23, 2021. However, The RTGS system will continue to be operational as usual throughout this period,” the RBI said in a release today.

RBI also stated that member banks may inform their customers to plan their payment operations accordingly as NEFT service will not be available on May 23, due to a technical upgrade. NEFT members will still get event updates through NEFT system broadcasts.

A similar technical upgrade for RTGS was completed this year on April 18. The RBI had proposed to extend RTGS and NEFT facilities to non-bank payment system firms in a phased manner. The purpose of that technical upgrade is to boost the participation of non-banks across payment systems.

NEFT

NEFT stands for National Electronic Fund Transfer, is a nationwide payments system that allows the transfer of funds from one bank to the other bank on a “real-time” and gross basis. There is no amount limit on fund transfer via NEFT.

However, it will affect a lot of people on May 23. There are other ways to transfer money if you face any unavoidable situation.

RTGS

RTGS transactions are processed continuously on a one-to-one basis 24×7, 365 days. Mostly, the RTGS facility is used for high-value transactions. There is no maximum transfer amount limit on RTGS but the minimum amount limit is Rs 2 lakh. Currently, there are over 100,000 RTGS enabled bank branches operating within the country.

IMPS

Apart from RTGS, you can also transfer funds via Immediate Payment Service or IMPS. However, the transaction limit via IMPS is significantly less and depends on individual banks.