The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has announced that its real-time gross settlement (RTGS) funds transfer system will be unavailable for 14 hours on Sunday, April 18 for a technical upgrade. The system will be inactive for users between 12.00 AM and 2.00 PM on Sunday.

In a circular, RBI said: “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. Accordingly, RTGS service will not be available from 00:00 hrs to 14.00 hrs on Sunday, April 18, 2021.”

RBI has asked banks to inform their customers to plan their payment operations accordingly. RTGS members will continue to receive event update(s) through system broadcasts.

However, the NEFT (National Electronic Funds Transfer) system will continue to be operational as usual during this period.

RTGS is a funds transfer system where the transfer of money takes place from one bank to another on a “real-time” and on a “gross” basis. Once processed, payments are final and irrevocable. This was introduced in 2004 and settles all inter-bank payments and customer transactions above Rs 2 lakh.