Banks to provide beneficiary account name look-up facility in NEFT, RTGS by Apr 1

Mumbai: The RBI has asked the National Payments Corporation of India to develop a facility to allow customers using online fund transfer systems, RTGS and NEFT, to verify the name of the bank account to which money is being transferred before initiating the transaction for avoiding mistakes and prevent frauds.

All banks that are direct members or sub-members of Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS) System and National Electronic Funds Transfer (NEFT) System are advised to offer this facility no later than April 1, 2025, the Reserve Bank said in a circular on Monday.

Currently, the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) and Immediate Payments Service (IMPS) systems enable a remitter to verify the name of the beneficiary before initiating a 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," it said.

RBI has advised the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) to develop the facility and onboard all banks.

It further said 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 will also be available to remitters visiting branches for making transactions.

Giving details, the RBI circular said that to ensure that remitters using RTGS and NEFT systems can verify the name of the bank account to which money is being transferred before initiating the transfer and thereby avoid mistakes and prevent frauds, a solution for fetching the beneficiary’s name is being implemented.

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)," it said.

"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," it said.

RBI further said that the 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.

Also, beneficiary account name lookup facility has be to made available to customers without any charge.