Soon, you can look up beneficiary bank account name for RTGS, NEFT payments

Soon, you can look up beneficiary bank account name for RTGS, NEFT payments

Reserve Bank of India on December 30 announced the introduction of beneficiary account name look-up facility for Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) System and National Electronic Funds Transfer (NEFT) Systems.

"Currently, the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) and Immediate Payments Service (IMPS) systems enable a remitter to verify the name of the beneficiary before initiating transfer. It has been decided to put in place a similar facility that would enable a remitter to verify the beneficiary bank account name before initiating a transaction using RTGS or NEFT system. Accordingly, National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) has been advised to develop the facility and onboard all banks," said RBI in a circular.

Based on the account number and IFSC of the beneficiary entered by the remitter, the facility will fetch the beneficiary’s account name from the bank’s Core Banking Solution (CBS).

All banks who are direct members or sub members of RTGS and NEFT will have to offer this facility no later than April 1, 2025, said RBI.

Banks which are participants of RTGS and NEFT Systems, shall make this facility available to their customers through internet banking and mobile banking. The facility shall also be available to remitters visiting branches for making transactions, added RBI.

To ensure uniform experience for customers, the banks shall adhere to the instructions given below:

* Provision to verify beneficiary bank account name shall be provided in Internet banking and Mobile banking facilities at the time of registering a beneficiary and at the time of one-time fund transfer where the beneficiary may not be registered.

* Provision to re-verify a registered beneficiary at any time shall also be provided.

* Beneficiary account name provided by the beneficiary bank shall be displayed to the remitter.

* In case the beneficiary name cannot be displayed for any reason, the remitter can proceed with the fund transfer, at her discretion.

* Specific alert messages as provided in the technical document, issued earlier by NPCI, shall be displayed to the remitter.

NPCI shall not store any data relating to this facility. In case of a dispute, the remitting bank and the beneficiary bank shall resolve the dispute based on the unique lookup reference number and the corresponding logs, said RBI.