RBI's BIG announcement: RTGS services unavailable on this date for few hours - Details here

You will not be able to operate RTGS on the third Sunday of April. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Monday said the Real-Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) service will not be available on April 18 due to a technical upgrade. Services will not be available from  00:00 hrs to 14.00 hrs on Sunday, April 18, 2021, the RBI said.

However, RTGS members will continue to receive event updates through system broadcasts, said RBI.

"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," the RBI said in a release.

NEFT to work

Worry not as you will be able to operate the NEFT system on April 18. While RTGS won't work, NEFT will continue to remain operational. The Reserve Bank of India has said that the National Electronic Funds Transfer (NEFT) system will continue to remain operational as usual from 12 am on April 18 till 2 pm on Sunday.

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 and  RTGS Members will continue to receive event update(s) through system broadcasts, the RBI said.

RTGS is a financial transaction system, where there is a continuous and real-time settlement of fund transfers, individually on a transaction-by-transaction basis.

The RTGS facility was made available round-the-clock on all days from December 14 last year, making India one of the few countries to operate the system 24x7.