How Long Does RTGS Transfer Take?

By Meghali Barua

Updated: Saturday, April 14, 2018, 9:36 [IST]

In the present digital world, electronic funds transfer is an easy way to transfer funds anywhere, anytime within banks. If you have an access to a laptop or a smartphone and an internet connection, you can transfer money from your bank to any person or firm holding a bank account in any bank across India easily and quickly.

In India, NEFT (Net Electronic Funds Transfer) and RTGS (Real Time Gross Settlement) are the two most fast and safe channels for inter-bank electronic funds transfer.

Let’s say that you need to transfer funds from your State Bank of India bank account to a relative’s AXIS bank account. You can do it quickly using either NEFT or RTGS.

NEFT is a system of funds transfer between banks where the fund is not immediately transferred but is done in the batches. NEFT transactions in India are settled in 23 half-hourly batches as defined by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI). If the transfer is initiated beyond the cut-off time period specified by the RBI, the fund is transferred to the beneficiary bank on the next working day.

There is no minimum or maximum limit on the amount of money to be transferred through NEFT.

How long does RTGS transfer take?

When you have to send a large amount of money urgently and on an immediate basis within India, RTGS is your best option. Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) is used when you have to do an immediate high-value fund transfer. The minimum amount you can transfer inter-bank through RTGS is 2 lakh rupees and there is no limit fixed on the maximum amount.

To do an RTGS transaction, however, the sender’s bank branch and the beneficiary’s bank branch have to be RTGS enabled under the Reserve Bank of India or RBI. You can check out the list of RTGS enabled bank branches on the RBI’s official website.

The unique feature about RTGS is that when you transfer money through RTGS, the transfer occurs in real time within the business hours of the bank.

In RTGS transactions, the processing of funds transfer instructions takes place individually on a real-time basis. It simply means that the transfer of funds to the beneficiary bank occurs at the same time the fund transfer instructions are received by the sending bank.

The moment you do an RTGS transaction, the amount of money you want to transfer will be deducted from your bank account and credited to the beneficiary bank branch at the same time. The beneficiary bank branch will then credit the money to the beneficiary’s (the person you are sending the money to) bank account within 30 minutes of receiving the fund transfer message.

You can do an RTGS transaction on any working weekday (Monday to Friday – 9 A.M. to 4:30 P.M.) and on any working Saturday (9 A.M. to 2 P.M.). However, the RTGS window timing a bank follows may vary depending on the customer timings of the respective bank branches. RTGS, today, has indeed made transferring money an easy process.

Note the bank holidays before sending the amount.