NEFTs get faster because banks will process them every 30 minutes now

RBI has reduced the settlement time for

clearance of NEFT from 1 hour to 30 minutes

Mumbai, April 10: On 6 April, the Reserve Bank of India in its monetary policy announcement said that it has decided to reduce the settlement time for clearance of National Electronic Funds Transfer (NEFT), from 1 hour to 30 minutes. Here is what it means for you:

NEFT is one of the electronic payment systems in the country. It allows you to send money from one bank to another. You can send the money only during a certain hours. The fund transfer happens in batches. So far, NEFT payment settlement happened in hourly batches. Now this has been changed to every half an hour. Hence, in a weekday (Monday to Friday) the batch between 8 am to 7 pm will have 23 batches. So far there were only 12 batches.

On Saturdays, NEFT settlements happen between 8 am and 1 pm. Now, instead of six batches, it will be settled in 11. There is no NEFT on Sundays.

The cost of sending money using NEFT depends on the bank that you are transacting with. However, the RBI has issued guidelines on the costs too. For receiving money over NEFT, you don’t have to pay any charges. For sending, you will be charged a fee.

For an amount up to Rs10,000, the banks can’t charge you more than Rs2.50, excluding service tax. If you send between Rs10,001 and Rs1 lakh, you will be charged Rs 5 plus service tax, and for transactions between Rs1 lakh and Rs2 lakh, charges would be Rs15 plus service tax. For transactions above Rs2 lakh, the charge would be Rs25 plus service tax.

Banks are also supposed to pay 25 paise per transaction to the clearing house as well as destination bank, as service charge. However, it cannot be passed on to the customers.

To send money using NEFT, you need to have an account with a bank that allows you to do fund transfer using NEFT. You need to have your beneficiary’s bank account details such as account number, name of the receiver, and IFSC code. Once you add the beneficiary, you will have to wait for half an hour for the beneficiary to get registered. Once registered, you can start sending the money.

According to RBI, In case of non-credit or delay in credit to the beneficiary account, you can contact the NEFT customer facilitation centre of your bank; details of which is available on bank websites.

DAILY DRILLs - 8

Nepal Remittance Facility Scheme Indo-Nepal Remittance Facility is a cross-border remittance scheme to transfer funds from India to Nepal, enabled under the NEFT Scheme. The scheme was launched to provide a safe and cost-efficient avenue to migrant Nepalese workers in India to remit money back to their families in Nepal. A remitter can transfer funds up to Indian Rupees 50,000 (maximum permissible amount) from any of the NEFT-enabled branches in India. The beneficiary would receive funds in Nepalese Rupees. Further details on the NEFT system and the NEFT-enabled branches are available on the website of Reserve Bank of India at http://www.rbi.org.in/scripts/neft.aspx.

Government asks state-owned banks to ensure one account per family

In a communication to the public sector banks, the Department of Financial Services in Finance Ministry has asked them to use the latest voter list as a reference for verifying that every household has a bank account.

The banks have been asked that the families must have one account in a bank on Core Banking Solution and having NEFT facility.

Now it has asked the SLBC Convenor banks to provide it with state-wise information on the number of households and the number of saving bank accounts by the 5th of every month.

It further said that since many households would have more than one savings bank account, the “number of saving bank accounts should be over 100 per cent of the number of households, preferably 125-140 per cent”.

As per 2011 census, about 58.7 per cent households had reported availing of banking facilities. Out of the 24.69 crore households, 14.48 crore reported availing banking services. Nearly 10 crore households were not availing the services.

Under Swabhimaan scheme of the government, over 3.25 crore bank accounts in rural areas were opened.

For financial inclusion of the excluded and to facilitate the electronic benefit transfer that banks were advised to ensure opening of one bank account per family.

“Latest voter list of the area concerned may be taken as a reference for verifying that every house hold has a bank account,” the Department said.