Sri Lanka Bank Transfer & Cheque Clearing Time Calculator

Every calculation starts from one rule: a banking day is a weekday (Monday–Friday) that is not a gazetted Sri Lankan bank holiday. Weekends and every bank holiday — Poya full-moon days, national and religious holidays, plus the 31 December year-end bank closing — are non-banking days. The holiday calendar is the same verified Central Bank dataset behind our Sri Lanka Bank Holidays Calendar, so there is no second, drifting list to maintain.

Each payment method then applies its own rule on top of that calendar, following how LankaClear and the Central Bank operate the national payment systems:

• CEFTS (online interbank) — near real-time and available 24×7×365. Funds land within about five minutes regardless of weekends, holidays or the time of day. Per-transaction ceiling: Rs 5,000,000.
• Same-bank internal— posts instantly on the bank's own core system, around the clock. No interbank clearing is involved.
• SLIPS — bulk direct credit processed in scheduled sessions on banking days only. Beat the modelled 15:30 cut-off on a banking day and funds clear the same working day by end of day; miss it, or send on a non-banking day, and settlement rolls to the next banking day.
• RTGS (LankaSettle) — real-time gross settlement for large-value payments, but only within RTGS business hours (modelled 08:00–16:00) on banking days. Outside that window it settles at the next RTGS open.
• Cheque (CITS) — cleared on a T+1 banking-day cycle. A cheque deposited before the modelled 15:00 cut-off on a banking day is presented that day and realises the next banking day afternoon; after cut-off it presents the next banking day, adding a day.

To resolve a “next working day,” the tool starts from the day after your initiation date and steps forward one day at a time, skipping every weekend and bank holiday until it reaches a banking day, listing each closed day and why. Cut-off times are documented system defaults labelled “varies slightly by bank” — LankaClear sets the system session windows while each bank publishes its own customer cut-off, so confirm the exact minute with your branch. The working-day logic and the 24×7-versus-banking-day-only behaviour are exact. Amounts, fees and daily limits are covered by our transfer fee calculator and online transfer limit checker.

• LankaClear — CEFTS (Common Electronic Fund Transfer Switch), incl. per-transaction limit
• LankaClear (Pvt) Ltd — operator of CEFTS, SLIPS and CITS cheque clearing
• Central Bank of Sri Lanka — Payments & Settlements / LankaSettle (RTGS)
• Central Bank of Sri Lanka — Bank Holidays (working-day calendar)

System rules and the CEFTS limit were last cross-checked against the LankaClear and CBSL sources on 2026-07-17. Cut-off times are documented defaults and may differ slightly by bank. This tool covers domestic LKR clearing only — dishonoured cheques and inward SWIFT remittances are out of scope.