Best way to transfer money abroad or make international payment from India

lal
lal
@lal-R60Xjx • Oct 26, 2024

I have been quite desperately investigating for methods to transfer money abroad and pay merchants abroad. PayPal can be used if you gets lucky that your debit/credit card is accepted. As Biggie said, due to RBI restrictions, services like PayPal or other wallet services cannot directly access money from the bank account, but through a card.

For the debit/credit card to be acceptable for international transactions, it should have single authentication. RBI has imposed two stage authentication process for most Indian debit and newer credit cards. The second stage, One Time Password (OTP), that is received in the registered cellphone number is the villain here, which restricts international transactions.

Some banks do provide debit/credit cards which have single stage authentication (without OTP) on request. In fact, I happened to stumble on a press release by SBI indicating about its tie-up with PayPal during the first quarter of 2015 (IIRC) which gave me hopes that PayPal will start accepting all SBI cards; only to my dismay!

Almost all virtual card services I happened to find had complicated conditions to be met or a considerably big amount already in the virtual account saved.

Finally I figured a way, a trusted friend abroad with a credit card is the best payment gateway 😁

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  • Kaustubh Katdare
    Kaustubh Katdare

    @thebigk • Oct 31, 2015

    I've taken the liberty to move above post to a new discussion. I think we can discuss ways to make international payments or simple money transfers out of India; because it's not so straightforward if you don't have a credit card.

    It's true that with Paypal, the entire money transaction becomes a cakewalk. However, RBI does not allow people to send money within India. That said, PayPal is still one of the most convenient ways to transfer money out of India.

    If you do not have an international credit card:

    I think without a credit card, the process of transferring money out of India is extremely painful. You either have to do it through the bank; which will lead to unnecessary charges to sender or the receiver; OR through the money transfer services, where you can pay through cheque.

    Are there other services which I'm forgetting?

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  • lal
    lal

    @lal-R60Xjx • Oct 31, 2015

    Oops! Sorry, I was not trying to derail the other thread!

    I haven't found any money transfer service like WesternUnion or MoneyGram which can legally transfer money from India to abroad. Those services can be used to only transfer money from abroad to India; yet another RBI restriction.

    The only method is swift transfer, direct bank to bank transfer, that exists as of my knowledge. Sadly the charges are huge - bank service charges plus conversion charges. Adding to that, only important branches of banks have the facility. Like, only one branch of a specific group of banks in a whole district.

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  • Ankita Katdare
    Ankita Katdare

    @abrakadabra • Oct 31, 2015

    I am not sure if I am adding value to this discussion, but this startup we covered makes use of the blockchain technology to send your money to the recipient, without him having to register on their website.

    Check the interview here: <a href="https://www.crazyengineers.com/threads/coinpip-ceo-anson-zeall-on-how-they-make-paying-freelancers-super-easy.82978">CoinPip CEO Anson Zeall On How They Make Paying Freelancers Super Easy</a>

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  • lal
    lal

    @lal-R60Xjx • Nov 1, 2015

    That looks workable! I will try CoinPip someday soon, hopefully, if a requirement pops up.

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