The Reserve Bank of India announced on Thursday, that the Real-Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) service will not be available for 14 hours on April 17 and April 18 due to a technical upgrade. The central bank also noted that the National Electronic Fund Transfer (NEFT) services will continue to remain operational during this period.
As technical upgrade of RBI's #RTGS is scheduled after the close of business of April 17, 2021, #RTGS service will not be available from 00:00 hrs to 14.00 hrs on Sunday, April 18, 2021. #NEFT system will continue to be operational as usual during this period for #moneytransfers.
— ReserveBankOfIndia (@RBI) April 15, 2021
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 April 17th to 2pm, April 18, 2021. The NEFT system will continue to be operational as usual during this period,” a statement from RBI said.
RBI also asked the member banks to notify the customers, asking them to plan their transactions accordingly. “Member banks may inform their customers to plan their payment operations accordingly. RTGS Members will continue to receive event update(s) through system broadcasts,” it said in the statement.
On April 7, the central bank allowed for the direct membership of non-bank payment system operators in the Centralized Payment Systems (CPS). Until then, RTGS and NEFT were allowed only for banks and specialized entities like clearing corporations and select development financial institutions. However, after the announcement, non-bank entities like Prepaid Payment Instrument (PPI) issuers, Card Networks, White Label ATM (WLA) operators, Trade Receivables Discounting System (TREDS) platforms would also be enabled to take direct membership in CPS.
The RBI announcement to extend the NEFT and RTGS facilities to digital payments intermediaries is a positive move. This will be a paradigm-changing development for the digital fintech landscape. It will help in further penetration of digital payments and increase digital transactions within the payment space,