Receiving Export Payments in India: FIRC & Fees

Quick answer: To receive export payments cleanly, pick a route that produces a FIRC (or an equivalent advice) and keeps you inside RBI's rules: your bank's SWIFT account, or an RBI-regulated cross-border aggregator such as Razorpay (1% on bank transfers, up to 3% on cards), Cashfree, Skydo (flat USD 19 or 29 per payment up to USD 10,000), Wise Business or Xflow. Then realise the money within the nine-month window the amended 2026 RBI regulations set.

How we researched this: We read the RBI's Foreign Exchange Management (Export and Import of Goods and Services) Regulations, 2026 (as amended to 22 September 2026), its Master Direction on Payment Aggregators, its LRS FAQ, CBIC's GST Rule 89 and Rule 96B text, and the international-payments, pricing and product pages of Razorpay, Cashfree, Skydo, Wise, Payoneer and Xflow. Facts are as checked in October 2026; each provider's own page is final on fees.

What RBI now requires of an exporter

The Foreign Exchange Management (Export and Import of Goods and Services) Regulations, 2026 came into force on 1 October 2026 and replaced the 2015 export regulations. The text on RBI's site carries amendments up to 22 September 2026, and the points that matter to a services or goods exporter are these:

• Declare the export. For goods, the Export Declaration Form (EDF) is deemed submitted as part of the shipping bill at an EDI port. For services, you submit an EDF within 30 days from the end of the month in which the invoice was raised, and one EDF can cover all exports to several recipients in a month. For services other than software, the EDF can be submitted on or before the date you receive payment.
• Realise and repatriate within nine months from the date of shipment (goods) or the date of invoice (services). Where an export is invoiced or settled in rupees, the period is twelve months. A footnote records that these figures were substituted on 22 September 2026; before that substitution the text read fifteen months and eighteen months. Project exports follow the contract's payment terms.
• Extensions are a bank decision. The authorised dealer (your bank) may extend the period if it is satisfied with your reasons.
• Small invoices get a lighter touch. Where the shipping bill or invoice is up to ₹10 lakh, the bank may close the EDPMS entry (its export monitoring record) on your declaration of realisation, and you can send such declarations quarterly for bulk closure.
• Chronic delay has a price. If proceeds stay unrealised for more than a year beyond the due date or extended date, further exports are allowed only against full advance payment or an irrevocable letter of credit.
• Third parties. The bank may permit receipts and payments by third parties if it is satisfied with the bona fides, which is the clause that lets a payment aggregator or marketplace sit between you and your buyer.

A Pune software-services firm invoicing a US client USD 8,000 on 10 November 2026 therefore has until early August 2027 to see that money in India, and its own deadline to file the EDF is 30 December 2026 unless it files earlier. Put both dates in your invoice tracker.

FIRC, eFIRC, FIRA and BRC: what the paper is for

The Foreign Inward Remittance Certificate is the bank's proof that foreign currency came in for a particular invoice. It matters in three places:

1. GST refunds on services. CBIC's Rule 89(2)(c) requires a refund claim for export of services to carry "a statement containing the number and date of invoices and the relevant Bank Realisation Certificates or Foreign Inward Remittance Certificates, as the case may be".
2. GST refunds on goods. Rule 96B says that if a refund has been paid on goods exports and the sale proceeds are not realised within the period allowed under FEMA (including extensions), the refund must be deposited back with interest within thirty days of expiry.
3. Your bank's EDPMS closure. Under RBI's payment-aggregator rules, a cross-border aggregator must give the exporter's bank the documents needed to close the corresponding entry in EDPMS.

Providers name the document differently, so read the label:

CBIC's Rule 89 names certificates, and in places says they must be "issued by Authorised Dealer-I Bank". Before you rely on a provider's FIRA for a GST refund, ask your chartered accountant and your bank whether that exact document is accepted for your claim. A "FIRC generator" dashboard is only as good as the party that issues the certificate behind it.

Who is allowed to move your money

Cross-border collection is a regulated activity. RBI's Master Direction on Payment Aggregators (15 September 2025) sets rules for a "PA-CB" (payment aggregator, cross-border), including:

• Inward and outward funds are kept separate, with no netting.
• A PA-CB may buy or sell foreign currency only through an authorised dealer bank.
• The maximum value per transaction is ₹25 lakh, inward or outward.
• Settlement in non-INR currencies is allowed only for Indian exporters directly onboarded by the PA-CB handling inward transactions.
• The AD bank holding the collection account must meet FEMA requirements and have automated processes to fetch information from the PA-CB.

At the roughly ₹95.7 per dollar that Skydo's calculator showed when we checked, ₹25 lakh is about USD 26,000, so a USD 40,000 invoice would need to be split or sent as a bank wire if your route is a PA-CB. Provider claims on authorisation vary in wording: Razorpay's page says its aggregation services are operated by Razorpay Payments Private Limited, an RBI-authorised Payment Aggregator; Cashfree says it is one of the first aggregators to receive the PA-CB licence; Payoneer and Xflow each say on their pages that they have in-principle approval from RBI. "In-principle" is not the same as final authorisation, so check RBI's published lists and ask for the authorisation letter before moving large amounts.

Fees and speed, as published

Do the arithmetic on your typical invoice, not the brochure. On a USD 8,000 invoice, Skydo's USD 29 is 0.36%; Razorpay's 1% bank-transfer rate is USD 80 plus GST; Cashfree's 2.99% card rate would be about USD 239. On a USD 50,000 invoice, 0.3% is USD 150 at Skydo against USD 500 at 1%. These are published fee lines only. The exchange-rate margin is a separate cost, which is why Razorpay and Skydo both say "zero forex markup" or "zero FX margin" and Wise says mid-market rate: compare the rupees that actually land, not the fee line.

Cards or bank transfer for a B2B invoice

Cards suit subscriptions, small tickets and consumers. Razorpay positions its card gateway for D2C, SaaS and travel buyers, and Cashfree accepts cards and PayPal in 140+ currencies and settles in INR. For B2B invoices of USD 5,000 and above, a bank transfer to a local account (ACH in the US, FPS in the UK, SEPA in Europe) is usually the cheaper rail and the one a buyer's accounts-payable team already trusts. Razorpay's page also lists payouts from Amazon US, Upwork, Toptal and Deel as supported sources, which covers freelancers and marketplace sellers. Choose a provider that issues the FIRC against each remittance and reconciles by invoice number, not just by amount.

Outward payments and FEMA housekeeping

Two points trip up growing firms. First, the Liberalised Remittance Scheme (LRS) is for resident individuals: RBI's FAQ says all resident individuals can remit up to USD 2,50,000 per financial year and that the scheme "is not available to corporates, partnership firms, HUF, Trusts etc." (the FAQ page was last updated April 2023). A company paying an overseas supplier for goods or services goes through its authorised dealer bank under the same 2026 regulations, which let the bank permit advance remittance after satisfying itself of the genuineness of the requirement and require it to close the import entry in IDPMS. "Outward remittance software" aimed at LRS is therefore not the right tool for a company's import invoices. Our guide to GST on foreign SaaS under reverse charge covers the tax side of paying foreign vendors, and claiming GST input credit on SaaS covers the credit side.

Second, FEMA tracking is mostly record-keeping: the EDF deadline, the realisation deadline, the EDPMS closure and the documents for the bank. Skydo's home page says it can generate an EDF and create GST-compliant invoices with payment reminders and a client ledger, which removes manual tasks (see more in invoicing software); your bank remains responsible for the EDPMS record. For the books, Zoho Books' Professional plan (₹1,499 a month billed annually on its India pricing page) lists multi-currency transactions, and TallyPrime is the alternative if your CA works there. Browse accounting software for others.

A workable setup for a small exporter

1. Open a current account with a bank that handles foreign inward remittances and note your AD bank's EDPMS contact.
2. Choose one primary collection route and keep the SWIFT details of your bank as a fallback.
3. Invoice in a currency your provider supports and quote the local-account details on every invoice.
4. File the EDF within the services deadline and diarise the nine-month (twelve if INR) realisation date.
5. Collect the FIRC or advice for each remittance and file it against the invoice for your CA's GST work.
6. Reconcile monthly: invoice, EDF, remittance, fee and GST on fee, in your accounting tool.
7. Review the route when volumes cross a pricing slab; Skydo's tiers, Razorpay's 1% and bank charges cross over at different invoice sizes. For a view of other gateways see Razorpay vs Cashfree fees, best payment gateway in India: charges compared and Stripe Atlas alternatives for Indian founders. The payment gateway category lists more cross-border options.

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