National Electronic Funds Transfer, or NEFT, is set to get faster – the transfers will now be made in 30-minute batches from the current hourly ones, the Reserve Bank of India announced on Thursday, PTI reported.
NEFT is a widely-used online payment system regulated by the RBI that allows inter-bank transfer of funds. Unlike the Real-Time Gross Settlement, or RTGS system, NEFT transactions are carried out in batches instead of in real time.
RBI Deputy Governor BP Kanungo said the NEFT window, which is between 8 am and 7 pm, will remain the same, but the 11 additional batches would mean quicker transactions. However, the timings may differ from bank to bank depending on the customer timings of various branches.
The move takes the total number of NEFT batches to 23 per day. “This will significantly improve the customer service and will increase the efficiency of the NEFT system,” Kanungo added.
The RBI deputy governor made the announcement after the first bi-monthly monetary policy meeting of the 2017-’18 financial year. The central bank decided to keep its key repo rate unchanged at 6.25%, while it hiked the reverse repo rate to 6%.
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