NEFT traces its origin to the erstwhile Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT), the first payment system that enabled one-to-one fund transfers, which was introduced in India in the late 1990s. It was operational at 15 major centres in the country. In 2005, it was replaced by a richer and more efficient system, namely, NEFT. With over 210 entities including all scheduled commercial banks – public sector, private sector and foreign banks, cooperative banks, regional rural banks (RRBs), payment banks and small finance banks participating in the NEFT system, it is the largest payment system operated by the Reserve Bank in terms of transaction volume. It is a countrywide payment system facilitating one-to-one money transfer without any limits on transaction amount, though it is commonly used for retail payments upto ₹2 lakhs. In this system, settlements of fund transfer requests happen in half hourly batches starting from 8 am to 7 pm on all bank working days.