Amid introduction of illegal online forex trade by certain companies, the Reserve Bank has asked credit card issuing companies to not permit payments for such transactions. The regulations under Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA), 1999, do not permit resident Indians to trade in foreign exchange in domestic or overseas markets.
The RBI’s instruction comes in the wake of introduction of overseas foreign exchange trading on a number of Internet and electronic trading portals, luring the residents with offers of guaranteed high returns based on such forex trading.
Several people have lost heavily in forex trade through Internet portals in the recent past.
“The advertisements by these Internet or online portals exhort people to trade in forex by way of paying the initial investment amount in Indian rupees,” the RBI said.