The RBI aims to reduce the clearing time required for bank cheques to a few hours as part of a major step to facilitate the ease of doing business in the country, RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das said on Thursday.

At present, cheque clearing through the Cheque Truncation System (CTS) operates in a batch processing mode and has a clearing cycle of up to two working days. It is proposed to reduce the clearing cycle by introducing continuous clearing with ‘on-realisation-settlement’ in CTS, Das explained.

“This means that cheques will be cleared within a few hours on the day of presentation. This will speed up cheque payments and benefit both the payer and the payee,” the RBI chief added.