Mumbai: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) will introduce new batches for settlement of payments through the National Electronic Funds Transfer (NEFT) from 10 July to ensure better service for customers.
In its first bi-monthly monetary policy of 2017-18 in April, the RBI had announced more batches under the NEFT to enhance efficiency and add to customer convenience.
The RBI said additional 11 settlement batches at half- hourly intervals will be introduced from 10 July, beginning from 8.30 am till 6.30 pm.
With this, the total number of half hourly settlement batches during the day will increase to 23. The starting batch at 8 am and closing batch at 7 pm will remain the same as hitherto, it clarified further. “The return discipline shall also remain the same i.e., B+2 hours (settlement batch time plus two hours) as per extant practice,” an RBI release said.
The NEFT system settles fund transfer requests of participating banks on net basis at hourly intervals from 8 am to 7 pm on all working days. The RBI has asked all the banks to make the required changes in their core banking solution (CBS) to carry out the new additional batches.
Here are a few things that you should know what additional NEFT batches mean for bank customers.
1) After addition of 11 more NEFT transfers, total number of such transfers in a cut-off day between 8 am to 7 pm has gone up to 23.
2) According to NDTV, there will be no change in timings for making an NEFT payment. The overall NEFT timings – between 8.00 am and 7.00 pm – will remain the same as earlier, the report said.
3) If the beneficiary bank does not receive money, the amount will be returned to the sender bank within two hours of completion of batch. And once the sender bank receives money it transfers it to the account of sender.
4) Now that the central bank has allowed more number of NEFT transfers, the time taken to complete these transactions will come down substantially. “This will improve the efficiency and add to customer convenience,” the RBI said.
5) For making a transaction through internet banking facility, NEFT charges are lower as against transaction carried out at bank branches that cost more.
Here’s how you can transfer money using NEFT:
Your bank branch has to be NEFT-enabled. You can check on the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI’s) website if it is so.
1. Get a net banking login id and password. Also, register your mobile number with the bank.
2. Add the details of the beneficiary to whom you want to transfer money. For this, you need the name of the person, his or her account number and 11-digit alpha-numeric IFS (Indian Financial System) code for the bank branch. The IFSC is printed on the cheque leaf. It is also available on the RBI website.
3. After adding the beneficiary, you may have to wait for some time before you can transfer money. For instance, in case of ICICI Bank, you can transfer money after half an hour of the addition of the beneficiary. In case of SBI, it is four hours.
4. Log in to your net banking account, go to ‘Transfer Funds’, select the beneficiary (you can add multiple beneficiaries) and transfer money by entering the one-time password that you will get on your mobile phone. The money will be transferred to the beneficiary’s account when the next settlement is scheduled.