The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) had made official announcement in a press release that they had laid out serious plans to make the online payment system, the National Electronic Funds Transfer (NEFT), available 24×7, in what may act as a key support to boost and encourage the government’s digital payments plan.
Currently at this moment, electronic transfer of funds via NEFT is relied fully upon bank working hours. The facility of electronic transfer of funds is available from 8.00 am to 7.00 pm on all working days of the week, except the second and fourth Saturdays in a month.
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“As mentioned in the Payment System Vision 2021 document, the Reserve Bank will make available the NEFT system on a 24×7 basis from December 2019. This is expected to revolutionize the retail payments system of the country,” the RBI said in a release on Wednesday.
The banking regulator of the country, Reserve Bank of India had last month scrapped the levy on online transactions such as NEFT to make transfer of funds cheaper.
“The need for extending availability of NEFT on a 24×7 basis to facilitate beyond the banking hour fund transfer needs would be examined. Need to add more features to NEFT (faster settlements, staggered payments) will also be examined,” according to RBI’s Payment System Vision 2021 released in May.
The banking regulator has also proposed to create a Central Payment Fraud Registry that will monitor and track banking fraud across the country. Currently, there is a mechanism in place for banks to report banking fraud to the Central Fraud Monitoring Cell of the RBI.
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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, the RBI said.
“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 endeavor of the Reserve Bank to improve the confidence of customers in the payment systems,” RBI said.