NEFT to be available 24X7

The Reserve Bank of India has announced that the National Electronic Funds Transfer (NEFT) facility will be available round-the-clock basis from December 2019. At present NEFT payment system operated by the Reserve Bank as a retail payment system is available for customers from 8 AM to 7 PM on all working days of the week except 2nd and 4th Saturdays of the month.

NEFT and RTGS

• Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) and National Electronic Funds Transfer (NEFT) are the bank transfer devices that allow an individual to transfer funds electronically from one account to another.
• RTGS is meant for large-value instantaneous fund transfers while the National Electronic Funds Transfer (NEFT) System is used for fund transfers up to Rs 2 lakh.
• NEFT settlements happen in batches. As a result, there might be a slight delay for the actual transfer to take place from the time you place the request for transfer. Whereas RTGS transactions happen in real-time, hence the beneficiary bank receives the instruction to transfer funds immediately and the transfer is instantaneous.
• The minimum amount that can be remitted through RTGS is Rs 2 lakh, and there’s no upper ceiling. While NEFT does not have a minimum transfer limit, the limit per transaction is Rs 10 lakh with no upper limit on the number of transactions.

The RBI has also decided to create a central payments fraud information registry system to deal banking frauds