National Electronic Funds Transfer (NEFT)

National Electronic Funds Transfer (NEFT) is a nation-wide system that facilitates individuals, firms and corporate to electronically transfer funds from any bank branch to any individual, firm or corporate having an account with any other bank branch in the country.
In order to issue the instruction, the transfer or should know not only the beneficiary’s bank account no. but also the the IFSC (Indian Financial System Code) of the concerned bank. IFSC is an alpha-numeric code that uniquely identifies a bank-branch participating in the NEFT system. This is a 11 digit code with the first 4 alpha characters representing the bank, and the last 6 numeric characters representing the branch. The 5th character is 0 (zero). IFSC is used by the NEFT system to route the messages to the destination banks / branches.
Once the NEFT instruction has been issued, it will be effected between the concerned banks in the next settlement. During weekdays, between 9am and 7 pm, there are 11 settlements i.e. every hour. On Saturdays, there are 5 hourly settlements between 9am and 1 pm. The beneficiary can expect to get credit on the same day, for the first nine batches on week days (i.e., transactions from 9 am to 5 pm) and the first four batches on Saturdays (i.e., transactions from 9 am to 12 noon). For transactions settled in the last two batches on week days (i.e., transactions settled in the 6 and 7 pm batches) and the last batch on Saturdays(i.e., transactions handled in the 1 pm batch) beneficiaries can expect to get credit either on
the same day or on the next working day morning (depending on the type of facility enjoyed by the beneficiary with his bank).