RBI nudges banks to fast-track inward foreign payments

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on Thursday directed banks to streamline their processes for inward cross-border payments to ensure faster customer notification and timely credit to beneficiaries. The central bank has mandated banks to inform customers immediately once a payment is made into their accounts, as per a noti-fication.

In cases where a payment happens outside of forex market hours, they will have to inform the customer the next day. It has also sought the reconciliation of nos-tro accounts in not more than an hour, according to the notification.

The central bank also encouraged lenders to endeavour to credit funds within the same business day during foreign exchange market hours, adopt straight-through processing based on risk assessment, and develop digital interfaces to facilitate foreign exchange transactions, including submission of documents or information, and monitoring of transactions, the RBI said in a release.

These norms were issued after examining the feedback received from stakehold-ers on the draft norms issued on October 29, 2025. The new changes will be ef-fective after six months from the issue of the circular, it added. As per the new norms, banks need to inform their customers immediately after the receipt of a message related to cross-border inward payments, but are not mandated to credit the amount immediately.

Meanwhile, the intermediary banks are expected to in-form the beneficiary bank of the receipt of cross-border inward transactions with-out delay. The circular requires banks to endeavour to credit the inward payments within the same day, which will be subject to compliance with the extant FEMA and other regulatory requirements, the central bank said.

Further, the circular states that banks may implement STP (straight through processing) based on their own risk assessment, FEMA and other regulatory requirements. "There is no re-striction in extending STP to customers other than individuals subject to adher-ence to the risk management and FEMA requirements," it said.