RBI to make NEFT available 24x7 for encouraging digital payments

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) plans to make online payment system National Electronic Funds Transfer (NEFT) available round-the-clock in a bid to boost digital transactions.

At present, the transfer of funds via NEFT is dependent on bank working hours. The facility of electronic transfer of funds is available from 8 am to 7 pm on all working days of the week, except the second and fourth Saturdays in a month. The NEFT system is used for fund transfers up to Rs two lakh.

"As mentioned in the Payment System Vision 2021 document, the Reserve Bank will make available the NEFT system on a 24x7 basis from December 2019. This is expected to revolutionise the retail payments system of the country," the RBI said in a statement on Wednesday.

Last month, the banking regulator had scrapped the levy on online transactions such as NEFT to make the transfer of funds cheaper.

The RBI also proposed creation of a central payment fraud registry that will track banking fraud. At present, there is a Central Fraud Monitoring Cell of the central bank.

Payment system companies will be provided access to the registry for near-real time fraud monitoring and the aggregated fraud data will be published to educate customers on emerging risks. A detailed framework in this regard will be put in place by the end of October, said the RBI.

"With the digital payment ecosystem making substantial progress in terms of growth of payment infrastructure as well as volume and value of digital payment transactions, fraud risk monitoring and management by the stakeholders have assumed importance. It has always been the endeavour of the Reserve Bank to improve the confidence of customers in the payment systems," it said.

.