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Informist, Monday, Jun. 29, 2026

 

NEW DELHI – The Reserve Bank of India notified an expanded scope of usage of special non-resident rupee accounts and allowed opening them through banks' International Financial Services Centre branches. The regulator has allowed all non-residents to open such accounts, tweaking earlier norms where only those with business interests in India could open them.

 

Any person resident outside India can open, hold and maintain a special non-resident rupee with an authorised dealer in India or its foreign branches including an IFSC branch in India, the RBI said. It deleted several clauses in the Foreign Exchange Management (Deposit) Regulations that required the business to be specified and imposed limits on activity based on the business.

 

Introduced in 2016, these accounts are different from the special rupee vostro accounts the RBI debuted in 2022, which require permission from the central bank to be set up. The notification was uploaded to the RBI website Monday but was notified by the government on Jun. 18.

 

The central bank also allowed easier credit and debit from the special accounts for non-residents subject to prudential limits. Non-residents may now credit their special non-resident rupee accounts through transfers from Non-Resident (Ordinary) deposit accounts, which were prohibited earlier. Similarly, funds in the special account can now be transferred to a Non-Resident (External) account or a special non-resident rupee account.

 

"Transactions between persons resident outside India involving the SNRR (special non-resident rupee) accounts, which may not be subject to compliance under the Act, or the Rules and Regulations framed thereunder, are to be effected by the AD (authorised dealer) bank based on instructions/mandate from the account holder that shall indicate the underlying purpose of the transfer," the RBI notification said.  End

 

Reported by Aaryan Khanna

Edited by Akul Nishant Akhoury

 

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