Overview
National Electronic Funds Transfer (NEFT) is an electronic funds transfer system maintained by the RBI. It enables Bank customers to transfer funds from any bank branch to any individual having an account with another participating bank branch. The fund transfer is not real-time but takes place in batches that get settled on half-hourly time slots. It means that if the transaction gets initiated after the settlement, it is required to wait until the next settlement time. NEFT does not impose any minimum or maximum limits on the amount to be transferred. The NEFT Fund Transfer API accepts the Remitter’s Name, Account Number, Mobile Number, etc. and the Beneficiary’s Account Number, Mobile Number and IFSC of the Beneficiary Bank’s branch. There is no limit – either minimum or maximum – on the number of funds that could be transferred using NEFT. However, the maximum amount per transaction is limited to ₹ 50,000/- for cash-based remittances within India and also for remittances to Nepal under the Indo-Nepal Remittance Facility Scheme. Operating hours: From December 16, 2019, as per RBI guidelines, NEFT is now available 24*7, 365 days i.e., any time of the day and any day of the week. The settlements of fund transfer requests in the NEFT system get processed on a half-hourly basis. There will be 48 half-hourly batches every day. The settlement of the first batch will commence after 00:30 hours, and the last batch will end at 00:00 hours. The system will be available on all days of the year, including holidays. This API will first respond with an Acknowledgement message immediately, which will contain the UTR, the unique transaction reference number provided by the Bank. When the transaction completes, the final transaction status message gets returned. This final message will have details of the fund transfer status, remitter’s and beneficiary’s account, the amount transferred, etc. Based on the status code, RESPONSE_CODE, and description, the client application can take appropriate actions. Both the response messages will have the same ReferenceID, with which the client had invoked this API.