Sending money to India

Money you earned abroad may be sent to India freely and credited to your own NRE or FCNR(B) account. There is no ceiling and no approval. Send it through the banking channel — a wire, or a licensed money transfer arrangement — so that the trail exists when someone asks where the funds came from.

Money you send to a parent, spouse or sibling in India is a gift to a resident. It goes to their ordinary savings account, not to an NRE account, and the exemption for gifts from a relative under the Income-tax Act is what usually keeps it untaxed in their hands.

The Liberalised Remittance Scheme, which caps outward remittances at USD 250,000 a financial year, is a scheme for residents. It does not apply to you while you are a person resident outside India — a point on which even bank branches occasionally slip.

All of that is the rule. The operational half — which of the four channels you are actually using, what to ask your Indian bank for before you send, what to write in the remark field, and why a transfer can arrive in full and still leave your bank with nothing to certify — is a longer read of its own.

Remitting money to India: channels and paperwork

• Foreign earnings → NRE or FCNR(B). Indian earnings → NRO.
• Keep the inward remittance advice; it is your proof of source.
• Cash and traveller's cheques are not a route for funding property.

Source: Reserve Bank of India, FAQ Accounts in India by Non-residents, as on 16 January 2025, for what may be credited to each account — read alongside the Foreign Exchange Management (Deposit) Regulations, 2016. The routes themselves sit in the RBI's FAQ Remittances (Money Transfer Service Scheme and Rupee Drawing Arrangement), as on 18 January 2017. Checked 20 September 2026.

What the rate is today

The rule above says where the money may go. What it is worth when it lands is a different question, and the rate you are quoted is where most of the cost of a transfer hides — usually more than the fee printed next to it.