A First for India: EbixCash World Money's Perpetual RBI Licence Brings Trade and Family Remittances Within Reach of Millions

BusinessWire India
Mumbai (Maharashtra) [India], July 22: EbixCash World Money Limited today became the first Authorised Dealer Category-II (AD-II) entity in India to be granted a perpetual RBI licence with an expanded scope of permitted activities -- a regulatory milestone no other AD-II player in the country has achieved. The upgrade follows a landmark revision to the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA) framework in May 2026, under which the Reserve Bank of India opened trade remittances of up to Rs. 25 lakh, and family maintenance remittances, to AD-II entities for the first time.

For an industry where trade remittance has been the exclusive preserve of banks and AD-I institutions, this is a structural shift. EbixCash World Money -- already India's largest AD-II network -- is now the first non-bank entity in its category authorised to carry that flow, putting it in direct reach of the MSMEs and SMEs that banks have historically underserved.
Why This Changes the Game
India's MSME exporters and importers have long faced a structural bottleneck: to send or receive payment for goods and services abroad, they needed a full banking relationship, often with slower turnaround and heavier documentation. EbixCash World Money's upgrade removes that bottleneck. Backed by a licence built for permanence -- not renewal cycles -- and a mandate that now spans trade remittance and family maintenance, the company is positioned to become the fastest, most accessible route for cross-border MSME payments in India.
Management Commentary
"This is the moment nearly three decades of building trust with the regulator pays off. We are the first AD-II in India to be handed this licence, and we don't take that lightly -- it's RBI's endorsement of everything we've built in governance, compliance, and customer protection since 1999. Our vision extends well beyond this licence. EbixCash World Money is recognised as one of India's most trusted and comprehensive payments and foreign exchange platforms -- one that brings payments, remittances, travel cards, and treasury together on a single technology-driven ecosystem. That vision is aligned with where the regulator itself is heading, from RBI's Payment Vision 2028 to the G20 Roadmap for Enhancing Cross-Border Payments. We don't just want to participate in India's digital payments story. We intend to help shape it."
MSMEs have never had an accessible, non-bank channel for trade remittance. With 100+ branches in 70+ cities and a presence at 20+ international airports, we're not waiting for demand to find us -- we're taking this capability directly to where India's exporters and importers already are."
-- TC Guruprasad, Managing Director & CEO, EbixCash World Money Limited
"A perpetual licence isn't handed out lightly, and an expanded activity scope on top of it is rarer still. RBI is trusting us with a wider mandate because our compliance architecture has been tested and proven, transaction after transaction, and audit after audit. Being first carries weight -- every trade remittance we process under this licence will set the benchmark for how the rest of the industry is expected to operate. We intend to meet that standard, not just today but for every transaction that follows."
-- Himanshu Pramanick, Chief Compliance Officer, EbixCash World Money Limited
Built on an Ecosystem Few Competitors Can Match
This licence upgrade does not arrive in isolation -- it lands on top of an infrastructure stack EbixCash World Money has spent years assembling. The company holds RBI approval to maintain Nostro accounts, a capability historically reserved for banks, enabling it to settle cross-border transactions directly rather than routing through third-party correspondent banks. It is also a Principal Member of both Visa and Mastercard, operating multicurrency prepaid travel cards across more than 12 currencies -- giving Indian travellers and businesses a ready-made rail for spending abroad. Together with the new trade remittance and family maintenance mandate, these capabilities give EbixCash World Money one of the most complete non-bank cross-border payment stacks in the country -- from settlement, to remittance, to spend.
More Than Forex: A Payments Fintech Operating at National Scale
While EbixCash World Money is best known for foreign exchange, the business today operates as one of India's most comprehensive integrated payments and forex platforms -- a "phygital" model that combines digital platforms with one of the country's largest physical distribution networks. The company facilitates more than 75% of India's cash-to-cash inward remittances and one of the largest outward remittances under the Liberalised Remittance Scheme through the AD-II channel, supported by over 25,000+ customer touchpoints nationwide and relationships with more than 40 partner banks for whom it supplies foreign currency.
The company's digital ambitions extend well beyond travel cards and remittance. EbixCash was the first Authorised Dealer and fintech in India to enable real-time cross-border payments to the United Kingdom through the Faster Payments Service and across Europe through SEPA Instant -- compressing international transfers that once took hours or days into transactions completed in near real time. Combined with its recent Payment Service Provider licence in GIFT City, its investments in AI-driven compliance, fraud detection and treasury automation, and its alignment with the RBI's Payments Vision 2028 and the G20 Roadmap for Enhancing Cross-Border Payments, EbixCash is positioning itself not merely as a forex specialist, but as one of India's larger and more consequential payments fintechs.
The Phygital Advantage: Where Digital Convenience Meets Human Trust
At the heart of EbixCash World Money's fintech model is what the company calls "phygital" -- a deliberate fusion of digital platforms and physical, human-assisted service, built for a market as diverse as India's. A customer can order foreign currency or a travel card entirely online, initiate a remittance from a mobile app, and still walk into a branch or an airport counter minutes before an international flight for face-to-face guidance on documentation, regulatory limits, or the right product for their need -- all within the same connected ecosystem, not a fragmented handoff between separate digital and physical businesses.
That model also does things purely digital players struggle to replicate, including doorstep delivery of foreign currency and travel cards across multiple locations in India. Behind the scenes, the same ecosystem runs on treasury automation, API-driven connectivity with more than 40 banking partners, intelligent pricing engines, real-time liquidity management, and AI-powered systems for onboarding, document verification, fraud detection, sanctions screening, and transaction monitoring. For regulated cross-border transactions, the company's view is that technology should not just make a transfer faster -- it should make it safer, more transparent, and more trustworthy, with human expertise available wherever a customer needs it. It is this combination -- fintech-grade technology, bank-grade governance, and a nationwide human network -- that underpins the licence upgrade announced today, and the trade remittance and family maintenance capabilities it now brings within reach of millions of Indian MSMEs and households.
Already One of India's Largest Payments and Forex Platforms
This licence lands on a business that has already scaled into one of India's largest integrated payments and foreign exchange platforms -- not a niche money-changing operation, but a full-stack fintech spanning digital payments, remittances, treasury, and travel cards. EbixCash World Money today facilitates more than 75% of all cash-to-cash inward remittances into India and close to 20% of outward remittances under the RBI's Liberalised Remittance Scheme routed through the AD-II channel, serving customers across more than 25,000 touchpoints nationwide and supplying foreign currency to over 40 banking partners across the country.

The company describes its model as "phygital" -- digital platforms for speed and self-service, layered onto one of India's largest physical distribution networks for the trust, guidance, and human assistance that regulated, high-value cross-border transactions still demand. That combination, rather than digital or physical alone, is what EbixCash World Money credits for its ability to serve customers across urban, semi-urban, and rural India, from online currency ordering and travel-card issuance to doorstep currency delivery and airport-counter service moments before departure.
A Track Record of Firsts in Digital Cross-Border Payments
EbixCash World Money was the first Authorised Dealer and fintech in India to enable real-time cross-border payments to the United Kingdom through the Faster Payments Service, and to Europe through SEPA Instant -- turning international transfers that traditionally took hours or days into transactions completed in near real time. As a Principal Member of both Visa and Mastercard, the company issues multicurrency travel cards across more than 12 currencies, a capability that traces back to its role in distributing India's first Forex Card, Visa Travel Money (VTM), in the early 2000s, and further still to India's first Stored Value Card in 1997 -- the country's original digital travel-payments instrument.
That track record of firsts underpins the company's broader ambition: to be recognised not merely as a foreign exchange company, but as one of India's most comprehensive digital payments and forex fintechs -- one built to compete on the agility of a fintech, the trust and governance of a regulated financial institution, and the reach of a nationwide distribution network, all at once.
A Market Opportunity Hiding in Plain Sight
India's MSME and SME sectors transact billions of dollars in cross-border trade every year, yet remain among the most underpenetrated segments for formal, fast, and transparent international payment services. With trade remittances of up to Rs. 25 lakh now within its licensed scope, EbixCash World Money can serve this segment directly -- without the friction of a full banking relationship -- while its family maintenance remittance capability extends the same reach to millions of Indian households with dependents or obligations abroad.
The company's distribution network -- over 100 branches across 70+ cities, plus a presence at 20+ international airports -- gives it an on-the-ground reach that few non-bank players in this space can match, turning a regulatory upgrade into an immediate, executable market opportunity.
Born of Liberalisation, Built for the Next Chapter
EbixCash World Money's story is inseparable from India's own economic opening. In 1991, facing a balance-of-payments crisis, India embarked on sweeping liberalisation reforms -- dismantling decades of licensing controls and opening its economy, including foreign exchange, to private participation for the first time. It was in this environment, in 1992, that EbixCash World Money's cross-border payments lineage began, as India's forex and remittance sector shifted from a tightly-controlled, bank-only domain into one where specialised, regulated non-bank players could participate.
What followed was three decades of compounding growth alongside the economy it served. In the years after that opening, as Indian businesses began travelling, trading, and transacting abroad in numbers the pre-liberalisation economy had never seen, EbixCash World Money grew from a single money-changing operation into a builder of the very infrastructure that cross-border payments in India would come to run on. The company was formally established in 1999 as a Full Fledged Money Changer, and upgraded to Authorised Dealer Category-II status in 2008 -- a step that took it from simply exchanging currency to actively remitting money across borders on behalf of Indian customers.
The decade that followed saw the company repeatedly do things no non-bank cross-border entity in India had done before: securing India's first GIFT City Payment Service Provider licence, opening the country's first Nostro account held by a non-bank cross-border player, and building the UPI-based payments solution that allowed foreign nationals to transact seamlessly during the G20 India Summit in 2023. Each of these was, in its own way, a small act of nation-building -- extending to ordinary Indian travellers, remitters, and small businesses the kind of cross-border payments infrastructure that, before 1991, only banks and the largest institutions could access. The perpetual AD-II licence announced today is the latest chapter in that same project: taking a capability that liberalisation first made possible, and putting it directly into the hands of the MSMEs and families who need it.
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