Same day clearance of outstation cheques soon

The process, which has now been taken up on a pilot basis, involves settlement or clearing of transactions based on electronic data and images without the actual exchange of instruments, he said.

‘‘The clearing instruments get truncated at the presenting bank itself,’’ he said after launching Syndicate Bank’s Syndbillpay through Internet banking. This process also ensures that there are no loss of instruments and there would also be in-built safety features.

Cheque truncation would be operationalised initially in four metros and some of the major cities such as Hyderabad and Bangalore where high bandwidth is available, Leeladhar said.

‘‘In due course, a national cheque truncation system may emerge possibly under the new national entity for retail payment systems — that will route all inter-city cheques facilitating, thereby, customer credits on a T+1 or T+0 basis (on the same day or next day),’’ Leeladhar added.

MoU on urban coop banks on the anvil

: RBI is in talks with state governments to sign a MoU for reviving ailing urban cooperative banks, RBI Deputy Governor V. Leeladhar said. ‘‘Within the existing legal framework, we are trying to see how state governments and RBI can sit together and draw up state-specific schemes for reviving sick urban cooperative banks,’’ he said. Out of the total 1,900 urban cooperative banks in the country, five states — Maharashtra, Gujarat, Karnataka, AP and TN — account for 85 per cent, he added. ‘‘We are in discussion with these states. We have suggested a MoU between RBI and the states concerned,” he said.

Banks must settle claims for deceased depositors

: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has asked banks to promptly release the balance amounts in the deceased depositors’ accounts to survivors, named in the either or survivor clause, or nominee without insisting on succession certificate, probate or obtaining indemnity or suerty from survivors. These funds should be released irrespective of amount outstanding to the credit of the deceased account holder, RBI said in a release here. Banks should use simple procedures to promptly release the balance amount in the deceased depositors’ accounts which operate under ‘‘either or survivor’’ clause or with nomination unit.