RTGS to go online next month

Reserve Bank of India will go "live" with the online real time gross settlement (RTGS) system in a month, a senior official said.

The RTGS project, which has been delayed by a couple of months, will allow inter-bank money market transactions of very high value to be settled online in real time, transaction by transaction. The settlement will be final and irrevocable.

"Currently trial run of the system is in progress. State Bank of India, Standard Chartered Bank, HDFC Bank and Saraswat Co-operative Bank are involved in the pilot project," R Gandhi, chief general manager (IT), RBI said on the sidelines of the Gartner-BFSI Summit 2004.

All scheduled commercial banks in India are expected to join the RTGS once it is up and running.

There are 113 scheduled commercial banks in the country. While emphasising that even advanced countries took around three years to put in place their respective RTGS, Gandhi said the negotiated dealing system, structured financial messaging system, centralised funds management system, and RTGS were parts of the same IT plaftorm.

All public sector banks, as per the central vigilance commission's directive, will have to meet the target of 100 per cent computerisation of business by December 2005, he added.

The proof-of-concept pertaining to the "multi-purpose smart card project" is being spearheaded by the Indian Institute of Technology (Mumbai) and the Institute for Development and Research in Banking Technology (Hyderabad), the official informed and added that the Card could be used for day-to-day transactions by individuals and will also be valid as an identity card.