“India’s cross-border and forex payments landscape is seeing strong momentum, led by students pursuing education overseas, followed by Indian businesses expanding globally and rising outbound leisure travel. The Union Budget offers a timely opportunity to address the distinct needs of these segments through targeted regulatory and infrastructure measures.
While education remittances funded through loans are already exempt from TCS, extending a similar exemption to education-related payments made from a student’s own funds would recognise these as essential, non-discretionary expenses.
The increasing reliance on exclusive or semi-closed education payment platforms linked to specific universities raises concerns around fee opacity, pricing power, and limited consumer choice. Ensuring open access and fee neutrality in education remittances is therefore critical.
There is also a need to introduce enforceable safeguards aligned to product positioning and end-use. Where payment instruments are marketed for international education or travel, mandatory submission of relevant documentation should apply at onboarding or usage. Further, explicit purpose tagging across all cross-border instruments, mapped to FEMA categories, will enable regulatory harmonisation based on use case rather than instrument type. Such harmonisation will strengthen reporting integrity, curb misclassification, and support genuine student and traveller needs.
As outbound leisure travel grows, consistent policies and investments in interoperable cross-border infrastructure will be key to delivering transparent and affordable forex solutions and positioning India as a credible global payments hub.”