India: SWIFT/BIC Codes & Payment Info

India's currency is the Indian rupee (INR), a market-determined managed float overseen by the Reserve Bank of India, which intervenes to smooth volatility rather than target a fixed level. The rupee is fully convertible on the current account (trade, services and remittances flow freely against documentation, in line with India's acceptance of IMF Article VIII in 1994), but the capital account is regulated under the Foreign Exchange Management Act 1999 (FEMA): outward investment by resident individuals is capped under the Liberalised Remittance Scheme at USD 250,000 per financial year, and inbound foreign investment follows sector-specific rules. Every foreign-exchange transaction must pass through a bank licensed by the RBI as an Authorised Dealer. India does not use IBAN. Domestic routing relies instead on the IFSC (Indian Financial System Code), an 11-character code in which the first four letters identify the bank (for example SBIN), the fifth character is a zero, and the final six identify the branch.

Inbound cross-border payments arrive by SWIFT (MT103 or the ISO 20022 MX equivalent) and then settle domestically through one of India's real-time systems: RTGS for high-value rupee transfers, live around the clock every day of the year since December 2020, and NEFT for retail credit transfers in half-hourly batches, also 24x7. For instant retail payments India runs IMPS and UPI, the latter now the world's largest real-time payment system by volume. Because domestic settlement is continuous, the constraint on an inbound payment is usually the correspondent leg and compliance checks rather than local clearing hours.

To credit an Indian beneficiary without delay, an instruction typically needs:

• the ordering customer in field 50 (account number, full name and address);
• the beneficiary in field 59 (account number, full name and address);
• the beneficiary bank in field 57, identified by its IFSC for domestic routing;
• a mandatory Reserve Bank of India purpose-of-payment code in the remittance information.

The purpose code is not optional: a cross-border payment that reaches India without a valid code is commonly cancelled and returned to the remitter, and a few purpose categories, such as certain gifts and donations, have been suspended since 2023. Large-value cross-border transactions, from about USD 6 million upward, additionally require the Legal Entity Identifier (LEI) of both parties, and once an entity holds an LEI it is expected on all of its transactions regardless of size.

On compliance, India has been a full FATF member since 2010, and a member of the APG and EAG regional bodies, and sits on neither the FATF grey nor black list; its 2024 mutual evaluation placed it in regular follow-up, the strongest category, and an Indian official takes up the FATF vice-presidency for 2026-27. India is a committed OECD CRS/AEOI jurisdiction and has exchanged financial-account information automatically since 2017. Anti-money-laundering rules rest on the Prevention of Money Laundering Act 2002, with suspicious activity and large or cross-border transactions reported to the Financial Intelligence Unit - India (FIU-IND) and FEMA and money-laundering offences investigated by the Directorate of Enforcement. India implements United Nations Security Council sanctions and maintains domestic terrorist designations but does not formally adopt US or EU autonomous programmes; internationally active Indian banks nonetheless align with them to preserve dollar and euro clearing access, so screen counterparties before you pay.

Cryptoassets, defined in Indian law as Virtual Digital Assets, are legal to hold and trade but are not legal tender and are not supported as a means of payment. Gains are taxed at a flat 30 percent with a 1 percent tax deducted at source on transfers above a small threshold, and losses cannot be offset. Virtual-asset service providers must register with FIU-IND and meet full KYC and anti-money-laundering obligations, and from April 2026 platforms face stricter transaction-reporting rules; banks provide rupee on and off ramps for registered exchanges but do not deal in crypto themselves. A single comprehensive crypto statute is still under discussion rather than enacted. The Reserve Bank's central bank digital currency, the Digital Rupee (e-rupee), remains in an expanding pilot begun in late 2022, with 2026-27 work focused on welfare disbursements, programmable and offline payments, and cross-border interoperability.