The Reserve Bank of India on Wednesday issued draft guidelines to streamline the process of cross-border inward payments. It intends to minimise delays in crediting funds to beneficiaries once the money arrives at the bank.
The RBI aims to bring efficiency in cross-border payments, aligning with the G20 road map. “One of the challenges with speed of cross-border payments is the delay between the 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,” it said in the draft.
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The new norms mandate banks to inform the receipt of cross-border inward transactions immediately on receipt of inward message. The RBI has observed that most banks use end-of-day nostro account statements to verify and reconcile incoming funds, which can cause delays in crediting receipts to customer accounts.
To address it, the RBI has asked banks to conduct the process either in near real-time or at regular intervals, ensuring that each reconciliation period does not typically exceed 30 minutes.
The RBI has also urged banks to credit inward foreign exchange payments to beneficiaries on the same business day if received during market hours, and on the next business day if received after market hours.