No payment systems to work on 2nd, 4th Saturday from Sept 1: RBI

Will work full day on other Saturdays; bank branches to be shut on 2nd, 4th Saturday from next month

Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has said that from September 1, 2015, payment systems will not work on the second and fourth Saturdays of the month, but would operate for the full day on working Saturdays. The payment systems that would not work include Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS), National Electronic Fund Transfer (NEFT) and ECS suite [Electronic Clearing Service (ECS) among others. This is because all scheduled and non-scheduled banks, public, private, foreign, cooperative, regional rural and local area banks, will have a holiday on second and fourth Saturdays from September onwards.

Other payment systems that would not work on these days include Cheque Clearing including the grid based Cheque Truncation System (CTS), Regional Electronic Clearing Service (RECS) and National Electronic Clearing Service (NECS).

The banking regulator said that processing of future value dated transactions with value date falling on second and fourth Saturdays will not be undertaken under RTGS and ECS suite.

Following a pact between public sector bank (PSB) employees and officers with the management, it was decided that all branches in the country will remained closed on all second and fourth Saturdays from July. Subsequently, the government issued a notification enabling the same for all banks.

RBI has however clarified that it would continue to operate fixed rate reverse repo as well as the marginal standing facility (MSF) windows on all working Saturdays and will also operate a fixed rate liquidity adjustment facility (LAF) repo window on all working Saturdays.

The central bank also said that as a regulator of banks, financial markets and payment and settlement systems, it has made supporting changes in the working of some of its operational areas. The above arrangements would be reviewed after six months.