The Reserve Bank on Wednesday said that the Real Time Gross Settlement System' (RTGS) will be made available round the clock from December 14. India will become one of the few countries in the world to operate its RTGS system round the clock throughout the year.

"This comes within a year of operationalising NEFT24x7 by the Reserve Bank," the RBI said in a statement. The settlement system began its operations on March 26, 2004 with a soft launch involving four banks, presently handles 6.35 lakh transactions daily for a value of Rs 4.17 lakh crore across 237 participant banks.

"The average ticket size for RTGS in November 2020 was Rs 57.96 lakh making it a truly large value payment system," the statement said.

"Round the clock availability of RTGS will provide extended flexibility to businesses for effecting payments and will enable introduction of additional settlement cycles in ancillary payment systems."

"This can also be leveraged to enhance operations of Indian financial markets and cross-border payments."

The RBI governor first announced that RTGS will be made available round the clock during the monetary policy announcement in October that it would be operational from December 2020.

Prior to this, in June, the RBI did away with charges levied on transactions processed through RTGS and NEFT. Until then there was a maximum fee of Rs 30 on RTGS transactions between Rs 2-5 lakh and a maximum of Rs 55 was charged for transactions above Rs 5 lakh.

Later in November, RBI also directed banks not to charge savings account holders for NEFT with effect from January 2020.

Following the most recent MPC meet, the RBI Governor also proposed enhancing limits for contactless card transactions and e-mandates for recurring transactions through cards (and UPI) from Rs 2,000 to Rs 5,000 from January 1, 2021.