Starting October 4, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) will roll out a new system to clear cheques within hours of being presented, cutting down the current clearance time of up to two working days.
Under the revised process, cheques will be scanned, presented, and approved within a few hours on a continuous basis during business hours. This will shorten the clearing cycle from the existing T+1 days to just a few hours. At present, the Cheque Truncation System (CTS) takes up to two working days for clearance.
To improve the efficiency of cheque clearing and reduce set-tlement risk for participants, and to enhance customer experience, the RBI has decided to transition CTS from the current approach of batch processing to continu-ous clearing with ‘on-realisation-settlement. RBI has issued a circular for introduction of Continuous Clearing 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,” it said. There will be a single presentation session from 10 am to 4 pm.
“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 pm), else those will be deemed to have been approved and included for settlement.