What is NACH and how does it work? Read on to understand more about NACH.
The centralised payment/transaction processing system by the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), National Automated Clearing House (NACH), lets you simplify and manage bulk payment across multiple banks and manage payments of utility bills, SIPs, premiums, donations, Credit Card bills or any other recurring payment.
NACH has been set up to serve as a faster and efficient platform for clearance. Use NACH to manage your payments easily and cost-effectively.
What is NPCI?
The NPCI or National Payments Corporation of India was formed by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in collaboration with the Indian Banks Association and ten promoter banks. The ten promoter banks are SBI, ICICI, HDFC, PNB, Citi, HSBC, Canara Bank, Bank of India, Union Bank of India and Bank of Baroda. NACH is NPCI’s product offering that aims to replace Electronic Clearing Service (ECS) systems across the country.
How does NACH work?
Here is the step-by-step process of how NACH works:
- The corporate (or money-collecting agency) collects the NACH mandate form from customers. With the mandate form, the customer gives the corporate the authority to debit his account for a certain period and at a certain frequency.
- The corporate verifies the details provided by the customer in the mandate form.
- After verification of details, the corporate forwards the NACH mandate to its bank.
- The corporate’s bank then shares the NACH mandate with the NPCI.
- Once the information is validated, the NPCI forwards the mandate to the customer’s bank for approval. Only fully validated transactions are forwarded to the customer’s bank for debiting.
- Once approved by the customer’s bank, the corporate is authorised to collect funds from the customer’s account.
Difference between NACH and ECS
Since NACH aims to replace the existing ECS systems, let us discuss a few differences between the two systems.
- ECS is a manual process and, thereby, takes a lot of time and faces verification issues. In NACH, the workflow is defined and this helps save a lot of time.
- Unlike ECS, NACH provides a unique mandate registration reference number which can be used for future reference.
- NACH involves less paperwork, so the rejection ratio is less as compared to ECS.
- With NACH, your payment gets settled on the same day, while ECS takes 3 to 4 days for the same.
- NACH features a dispute-management system, which will resolve your issues easily, while ECS has no such systems in place.
- NACH registrations take only 15 days, while ECS registrations take up to 30 days.
A few more features of NACH
- Incorrect details such as your bank account number, folio number, etc. can result in your NACH getting rejected.
- NACH can also be rejected if the investor’s bank is not a part of NACH.
- You just have to submit the cancellation form to stop NACH any time.
- There is no limit on how many NACH mandates you can register.
- The default NACH mandate has been set to 31/12/2099.
With its nationwide reach, same-day debit realisation, multi-level security measures and future-ready technology, NACH is here to transform the payment landscape in India. Its pan-India availability not only makes it a cost-effective solution, but it also provides corporations access to each and every one of their customers across the country.