NACH will be operational 365 days a year from August 1

The National Automated Clearing House (NACH), which is used for periodic payments such as bills, mutual funds and salaries, will be made available on all days of the year, including bank holidays and weekends, from August 1, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) said on Friday.

The reason for this is that NACH has, over the pandemic, emerged as a key digital mode of direct benefit transfer. The settlement system is operated by National Payments Corporation of India, which also runs the Unified Payments Interface (UPI).

“NACH has emerged as a popular and prominent digital mode of direct benefit transfer (DBT) to a large number of beneficiaries. This has helped transfer of government subsidies during the present Covid-19 outbreak in a timely and transparent manner,” RBI governor Shaktikanta Das said.


Currently, NACH is available only on days when banks are open. “In the interest of customer convenience, and to take advantage of the availability of RTGS on all days of the year, it is proposed to make available NACH on all days of the week throughout the year, effective August 1, 2021,” Das added.

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The move follows the central bank’s previous decisions to make both its RTGS and NEFT functional 24 hours a day. According to data from the RBI, NACH processed 320 million credit transactions worth Rs 1.32 lakh crore in May.

NACH is used for a variety of payments, including dividend, interest, salary and pension; electricity, gas, telephone and water bills; and periodic installments for loans, investments in mutual funds, insurance premiums, and more.