The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is set to significantly accelerate cheque clearing times, with plans to reduce the process to just a few hours, RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das announced on Thursday.
Currently, the Cheque Truncation System (CTS) operates on a batch processing basis, with a clearing cycle that can take up to two working days. The RBI’s new proposal aims to overhaul this system by implementing continuous clearing with ‘on-realisation-settlement’ in CTS. This upgrade is expected to ensure that cheques are cleared within hours on the day they are presented.
“This initiative will streamline cheque payments, benefiting both payers and payees by speeding up the settlement process,” Das explained.
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Cheque truncation replaces the traditional physical movement of cheques between banks with electronic images. Instead of sending the physical cheque, banks transmit an electronic image through the clearing house, which includes essential details such as the MICR band, presentation date, and presenting bank information. This shift reduces the need for physical cheque transport, cutting costs and speeding up the collection process.
The CTS framework enables faster and more cost-effective fund realization compared to traditional methods. Under the new grid-based CTS clearing system, cheques drawn on branches within the same grid are processed as local cheques, eliminating outstation collection charges even if the banks are in different cities but within the same CTS grid.
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