The National Automated Clearing House (NACH) Payment System operated by National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) will be available 24×7 from August 1, 2021.
This means that the NACH will process your RTGS payments all through the day. Earlier, this facility was only available during office hours.
NACH helps in making credit transfers such as dividends, interest, salaries, pensions, and so on and in collecting payments such as utility payments, loan EMIs, ECS transactions such as SIPs and so on. The government also uses it to transfer direct benefits such as LPG subsidies, or any other subsidies like those announced for COVID-19 relief.
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) statement read, “NACH is currently available only on the days when banks are functional. In the interest of customer convenience, and to take advantage of the availability of RTGS on all days of the year, it is proposed to make available NACH on all days of the week throughout the year, effective August 1, 2021.”
In other news, the bank continued its existing benchmark interest rate of 4 per cent. The rate was last changed over a year ago on May 22, 2020.
For those who do not know, NPCI is an RBI subsidiary and serves as an umbrella organisation to operate all retail payments and settlement systems in India. It is owned by a consortium of major banks in the country. Some of its offerings include the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), the BHIM app and the RuPay payment service system.