Summary: The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) released a draft circular on October 29, 2025, proposing guidelines to facilitate faster cross-border inward payments. The initiative aligns with the Payments Vision 2025 and the G20 roadmap for achieving quicker, cheaper, transparent, and accessible cross-border transactions. The draft aims to resolve delays between receipt of payments at beneficiary banks and credit to beneficiary accounts. Comments on the draft circular are invited from banks by November 19, 2025, through the ‘Connect2Regulate’ section of the RBI website or via email.
The proposed guidelines require banks to immediately inform customers upon receiving cross-border inward payment messages. If such messages are received after business hours, the information must be conveyed at the start of the next working day. Banks are advised to undertake near real-time or frequent reconciliation of nostro account credits, with intervals not exceeding thirty minutes, to reduce delays caused by end-of-day confirmations. Further, inward payments received during foreign exchange market hours should be credited within the same business day, while those received afterward should be credited on the next business day, subject to FEMA and other regulations.
Banks are encouraged to establish straight-through processes for automatically crediting inward payments to residents’ accounts, based on risk assessment and regulatory compliance. They are also advised to provide customers with a digital interface for foreign exchange transactions, document submissions, and transaction monitoring. These measures aim to enhance efficiency and transparency in the cross-border payment system. The directions will take effect six months after the circular’s issuance under the authority of the Payment and Settlement Systems Act, 2007.
Reserve Bank of India
India’s Central Bank
Press Release
Dated: Oct 29, 2025
RBI releases Draft circular on Guidelines to facilitate faster cross-border inward payments
The Reserve Bank of India today placed on its website a draft circular on Guidelines to facilitate faster cross-border inward payments. Comments / feedback on the draft Circular are invited from banks by November 19, 2025. The comments/ feedback may be submitted through the link under the ‘Connect2Regulate’ Section available on the Reserve Bank’s website. Comments may alternatively be forwarded to:
The Chief General Manager-in-Charge,
Department of Payment and Settlement Systems,
Reserve Bank of India,
14th Floor, Central Office Building,
Shahid Bhagat Singh Marg, Fort
Mumbai-400001
Or by email with subject line “Feedback on Draft circular on Guidelines to facilitate faster cross-border inward payments”
Background and objective
2. The Reserve Bank’s Payments Vision 2025 aims to bring efficiency in the cross-border payments aligning with the G20 roadmap for cross-border payments that has set targets for achieving cheaper, faster, transparent, and accessible cross-border payments. One of the challenges with speed of cross-border payments is the delay between receipt of the payment at the beneficiary bank and credit to the beneficiary account. This draft circular aims to address some of the frictions for facilitating timely intimation of payment information and credit to the beneficiary’s account.
(Brij Raj)
Chief General Manager
Press Release: 2025-2026/1410
Reserve Bank of India
India’s Central Bank
Guidelines to facilitate faster cross-border inward payments
DPSS.CO.ID.No / 06.08.017 / 2025-26
DD-MM-YYYY
The Chairman / Managing Director / Chief Executive Officer
All Scheduled Commercial Banks
Madam / Dear Sir,
Guidelines to facilitate faster cross-border inward payments
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.
2. The speed of cross-border payments is affected by several factors. One of these factors 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. Streamlining the processes at the beneficiary bank would ensure timely intimation of payment information and credit to the beneficiary’s account.
3. Accordingly, banks are advised as under:
a. Banks shall inform their customer of the receipt of cross-border inward transactions immediately on receipt of inward message. Messages received after close of operating hours of the individual banks shall be informed to the customer immediately at the start of the next business day.
b. It is observed that several banks rely upon end-of-day statements of the nostro account for confirming and reconciling receipts in 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 near real time basis or at periodic intervals. The reconciliation interval should normally not exceed thirty minutes.
c. 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.
d. 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.
e. Banks may, within a reasonable time frame, endeavour to provide digital interface to their customers to facilitate foreign exchange transactions, including submission of documents or information, and monitoring of transactions.
4. The directions at para 3 above shall be effective six months from the date of this circular.
5. The directive is issued under Section 10(2) read with Section 18 of Payment and Settlement Systems Act 2007, (Act 51 of 2007).
Yours faithfully,
(Gunveer Singh)
Chief General Manager-in-Charge
