Alert! RTGS won’t be operational on April 18: Here’s what RBI said about NEFT

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has informed that customers won’t be able to operate RTGS on the third Sunday of April but the NEFT system will be accessible on April 18.

In a press note, the central bank said about “non-availability of service – 00.00 Hrs to 14.00 Hrs on Sunday, April 18, 2021.”

The RBI said in a statement that Real-time gross settlement (RTGS) service will not be available from 12 am on April 18 till 2 pm on Sunday. However, RTGS members will continue to receive event updates through system broadcasts, the bank revealed. 

The National Electronic Funds Transfer (NEFT) system will continue to remain operational from 12 am on April 18 till 2 pm on Sunday, RBI said in a statement.

Due to a technical upgrade of RTGS, the services will be affected and it is done to better the Disaster Recovery Time of the RTGS system and therefore, the bank said that the member banks should send prior information to their customers to plan their payment operations accordingly.

As per a report by IANS, online transactions witnessed a surge of 76 percent in the first quarter of 2021 as compared to 2020, as tier 2 and 3 cities and towns continued to contribute over 50 percent of all online transactions, a new report said on Monday. After seeing a steep decline in 2020 owing to the pandemic, the travel industry grew by 50 percent while real estate was up by 69 percent in the first three months of this year.