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In a welcome step the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has made a major change in the process of clearing checks. From October 4 2025 checks will now be paid in a few hours whereas it used to take a maximum of two working days. Banks will scan the checks received from their customers send them to the clearing house and then submit them for approval during banking hours. The check clearing cycle will be reduced from the current T+1 days i.e. the next working day of deposit to a few hours. RBI has also instructed all banks to fully inform their customers about these changes in the check clearing process. Banks must be fully prepared to participate in continuous clearing on the scheduled dates. How the new system will work? For this the Check Truncation System (CTS) will be changed. Currently cheques are processed in batches in CTS. Now in its place Continuous Clearing will be introduced with on-realisation-settlement. This will be implemented in two phases: The Phase-1 will be from October 4 2025 to January 2 2026. The cheque submission time (Presentation Session) will be from 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM. Banks will immediately scan the cheques received at their branches and send them to the clearing house continuously during this time period. The bank on which the cheque is drawn (the drawee bank) must indicate by 7:00 pm (end of the confirmation session) for each cheque whether it accepts the cheque (positive confirmation) or rejects it (negative confirmation). If a bank does not respond by this time limit the cheque will be considered accepted and included in the settlement. And in Phase-2 - from January 3 2026 the cheque validity time limit (item expiry time) will be set to T+3 clearing hours. If a bank does not respond within the stipulated 3 hours the cheque will be considered accepted and will be included in the 2:00 pm settlement. Why is this system being introduced? RBI says that this move has been taken to enhance the efficiency of cheque clearing reduce payment risk for participating banks and most importantly improve customer experience. When will the customer receive the money? After the settlement is complete the clearing house will send positive and negative confirmation information to the bank that deposited the cheque (presenting bank). The presenting bank has to process this information and make the payment to the customers account within 1 hour of successful settlement.