Liberalized Remittance Scheme (LRS) allows Indian residents to remit funds from India to abroad up to $250,000 per financial year (April 1 – March 31). You can do this by making multiple transfers throughout the year. However, you need to be careful and ensure that your cumulative transfers don’t exceed the quota at any point during the financial year. You may have to wait till the following financial year to remit more funds without obtaining permission from RBI. Those who want to send more than the RBI sets limit will have to approach RBI for consent to send the amount that exceeds the limit. The Indian Government has introduced the Liberalized Remittance Scheme (LRS) to enable resident Indians and expatriates to send money abroad directly from their bank accounts in India. The rules governing LRS have been relaxed, resulting in a considerable increase in remittances from India over the last couple of years. However, many remitters face delays in fund transfer invalid account details while transferring money abroad through the LRS route.
This article defines some of the common challenges one may encounter while using the LRS route and how they can be side-stepped or overcome.
Invalid account details
Since your beneficiary is waiting for money, make sure you have a valid bank account number plus other details like SWIFT Code/BIC Code/IBAN/International Routing Code – depending on the country where you send the money. Banks can’t transfer money without a valid account number, and they will often delay transactions while trying to get information from you. Ensure that when you are sending money abroad, you are using the correct account number and name of your intended beneficiary. If someone else will be receiving your money (e.g., if you are sending funds in care of someone), make sure they can pick up your remittance at their local bank without any problems. The incorrect account number and name can lead to problems at foreign banks and Indian banks because the beneficiary might not receive funds in time.
Invalid beneficiary details
If you do not have complete beneficiary details, your transfer will remain on hold for further authentication and verification. Always make sure you provide the correct first name, last name, and complete address of the receiver. If the amount is debited from the Unimoni intermediary bank account but fails due to invalid or incomplete details, you will be refunded only after completing the verification process. This process can take up to 6–8 working days depending on the bank’s policy and may be time-consuming if done manually. The best way would be to provide complete details before initiating the transfer. In cases when you need it urgently or beneficiary information changes, because the automatic update cannot happen, manual intervention would be required.
Verification process
According to Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA), 1999, RBI is authorized to prescribe norms and standards for regulating inflows and outflows of foreign exchange. To avail benefits under the Liberalized Remittance Scheme (LRS), a remitter must be KYC compliant with Unimoni. While on the one hand, LRS enabled remitters need not undergo any specific due diligence process other than the normal, on the other hand, such remittances have conditions such as maximum allowable amount per transaction/cumulative limits/permissible modes of fund transfer, etc. as notified time-to-time by RBI from time-to-time. RBI may also put mechanisms for monitoring compliance with these conditions for effective implementation of the Liberalized Remittance Scheme (LRS).
Correspondent and beneficiary Bank issues or technical issues
Some of these issues can take a long time to solve—especially if the beneficiary is in an area with less international banking activity. For example, correspondent banks work with foreign banks and help facilitate cross-border payments. If there’s a problem with your beneficiary bank or your payment route, it can slow down how quickly you receive your money. Correspondent and beneficiary bank issues also cause problems when transferring money back into India. Technically, since only authorized dealers are allowed to process LRS transactions—banks cannot handle such remittances without prior permission from RBI—if there’s a problem processing your overseas funds, it might take a while for your money to get back home.
Final thoughts
To speed up the remittance services, as a customer, you have to ensure that the beneficiary name, beneficiary bank details, and documents you provided are correct, as Unimoni suggested. The rest of the issues, which may come en route to money transfer, will be taken care of by Unimoni. Unimoni has around 25 plus years of expertise in inward and outward money transfer services.
