RBI Extends Cheque Truncation System Across All Branches

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has decided to carry out the Cheque Truncation System (CTS) to all bank branches by September 2021 in order to speed up and smooth out the country's cheque clearances.

“To leverage the availability of CTS and provide uniform customer experience irrespective of location of her/his bank branch, it has been decided to extend CTS across all bank branches in the country,” the RBI said in a circular to all the commercial banks.

“Banks will have to ensure that all their branches participate in image-based CTS under respective grids by September 30, 2021,” the RBI said. They are free to adopt a model of their choice, like deploying suitable infrastructure in every branch or following a hub & spoke model and concerned banks should coordinate with the respective Regional Offices of RBI to operationalise this system, the central bank said.

CTS has been in use since 2010 and presently covers around 1, 50, 000 branches. All the erstwhile 1,219 non-CTS clearing houses (ECCS centres) have been migrated to CTS effective September 2020. “It is, however, seen that there are branches of banks that are outside any formal clearing arrangement and their customers face hardships due to longer time taken and cost involved in collection of cheques presented by them,” the RBI said.

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