Mumbai, August 13: Clearance of cheques will be easier and sooner as the RBI is going to introduce a new mechanism from October 4.
If the new mechanism works, clearance of cheques will be possible within hours of submission in the bank.
According to RBI, the cheques will be scanned, presented, and passed in a few hours and on a continuous basis during business hours.
The clearing cycle will be reduced from the present T+1 days to a few hours.
Cheque Truncation System (CTS) currently processes cheques with a clearing cycle of up to two working days.
Now, the RBI has decided to transition CTS from the current approach of batch processing to continuous clearing with 'on-realisation-settlement'.
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has issued a circular for introduction of Continuous Clearing and Settlement on Realisation in CTS.
"It has been decided to transition CTS to continuous clearing and settlement on realisation in two phases. Phase 1 shall be implemented on October 4, 2025 and Phase 2 on January 3, 2026," said the circular.
There will be a single presentation session from 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM wherein received cheques shall be scanned and sent to the clearing house by the banks immediately and continuously during the presentation session, RBI said.
"For every cheque presented, the drawee bank shall generate either positive confirmation (for honoured cheques) or negative confirmation (for dishonoured cheques)," it said.
During Phase 1 (from October 4, 2025 to January 2, 2026), drawee banks will be required to confirm (positively/negatively) cheques presented on them, latest by the end of the confirmation session (7:00 PM), else those will be deemed to have been approved and included for settlement.
In Phase 2 (from January 3, 2026), the item expiry time of cheques shall be changed to T+3 clear hours.
To aware people of the new & robust system, the RBI directed banks to sensitize people regarding the shift.
Banks have also been asked to be in readiness to provide assistance to customers in exchanging the cheques within a few hours.
