The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Wednesday has issued draft guidelines to make cross-border inward payments easier and faster. In simple words, this will help Indians abroad send money home faster. The RBI said in a draft circular that the move is aimed at improving efficiency in cross-border payments and aligning with the G20 roadmap. It has invited comments on its proposals from banks by November 19, 2025
"The Reserve Bank’s Payments Vision 2025 aims to bring efficiency in cross-border payments aligning with the G20 roadmap to make them cheaper, faster, more transparent, and more accessible," the RBI said.
The bank said that one of the several factors that affect the speed of cross-border payments is the delay at the beneficiary leg, i.e. the time taken from receipt of the payment at the beneficiary bank till credit to the beneficiary account. The central bank said that streamlining the processes at the beneficiary bank would ensure timely intimation of payment information and credit to the beneficiary’s account.
Here's what banks have been advised by the RBI
- Banks shall inform their customer of the receipt of cross-border inward transactions immediately on receipt of the inward message. Messages received after the individual banks' operating hours shall be communicated to the customer immediately at the start of the next business day.
- It is observed that several banks rely upon end-of-day statements of the nostro account for confirming and reconciling receipts in the nostro accounts, resulting in delayed credit. To expedite this process, banks are advised to undertake reconciliation and confirmation of credit in the nostro account either on a near real-time basis or at periodic intervals. The reconciliation interval should normally not exceed thirty minutes.
- Banks shall endeavour to credit the inward payments received during the foreign exchange market hours within the same business day to the beneficiary’s account, and credit the inward payments received after market hours on the next business day, subject to compliance with the extant FEMA and other regulatory requirements.
- Banks may, based on their risk assessment and subject to compliance with extant FEMA guidelines, put in place a straight through process for crediting inward payments to the account of individual residents.
- Banks may, within a reasonable time frame, endeavour to provide a digital interface to their customers to facilitate foreign exchange transactions, including submission of documents or information, and monitoring of transactions.
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