May 15: Nepal Clearing House Limited (NCHL) has signed agreements with a majority of the country’s commercial banks to facilitate the latter in integrating their core banking systems with the Real Time Gross Settlement System (RTGS) which is under implementation by Nepal Rastra Bank (NRB). 

 

Issuing a statement, NCHL said that the agreement was signed at an event at Hotel Royal Shingi, Durbarmarg on May 13, in presences of the executive director of the Payments System Department of NRB, president of Nepal Bankers’ Association and the CEOs and representatives of various commercial banks.

 

According to the arrangement, NCHL will facilitate the banks in providing the required ‘RTGS Integration Middleware’ that will enable the banks to initiate and process transactions between RTGS and their internal systems, which is considered to be a key component for the successful rollout of RTGS. 

 

This partnership, according to NCHL, will facilitate the banks for integration, which is expected to support the NRB’s initiative of timely implementation of RTGS. 

 

NCHL has been providing its member banks and financial institutions (BFIs) with payment services including e-payments along with necessary integration components and other consolidated application programming interfaces (APIs). And, as part of the RTGS Integration, NCHL said it will be customizing the existing integration arrangements to support the requirements of the banks for RTGS.

 

RTGS is meant for the processing of high-value transactions between the participating BFIs and for settlement of net clearing positions of the national payment system. 

 

RTGS in Nepal is being implemented by NRB with support from DFID, Sakchyam Access to Finance for Poor Programme.