Overview

As an Indian expat living overseas, you may need to send money to India for different reasons (i.e., sending money to your loved ones, buying a property in India, saving money in your NRE Bank account, etc.). With technological advancement, sending money to India from the USA has become easier and quicker. Once you’ve identified the best money transfer money provider from the USA to India with the help of NriDealExpert’s Rupee Exchange comparison tool at https://nridealexpert.com/money-to-india, you need to register yourself with the provider and initiate a funds transfer. Different providers offer different payment methods to initiate the fund's transfer - from conventional payment methods to debit or credit cards. However, each payment method has associated benefits and risks which should be considered before initiating a money transfer, as it can directly impact the overall cost and speed of transferring rupees to your beneficiary in India. We have prepared a Dummies guide to help you understand each payment method so that you can choose the right one for a cost-effective and fast money transfer to India.

1. PayPal

PayPal is one of the largest online payment processing systems today. With this service, you can send money to the transfer provider’s account without incurring any cost for the transfer.

2. ACH Transfer

This stands for “Automatic Clearing House” transfer and is a kind of e-transfer system. It is regulated by the “National Automated Clearing House Association” that controls the inter-banking clearances of e-payments. If you initiate a transfer to India from the USA through ACH, the money transfer provider will initiate the transfer through its correspondent bank in the US. The correspondent bank then creates a remittance file and transfer it to ACH, which will then transfer the funds to the recipient’s bank in India. The beneficiary in India will receive the funds within four business days. The benefit of ACH transfer is that there are no costs involved and there is no need to visit any bank to initiate this.

3. Online Money Transfer or Account Transfer or NetBanking Transfers

Online money transfer is quite effective if you transfer funds regularly. If you have an internet connection, a bank account, details of the recipient (name and address), name and IBAN or SWIFT code of the recipient bank, you can initiate an online money transfer. With this payment method, you can avoid hefty banking charges and yet carry out the transfer from your home.

4. E-mail Money Transfer

This is a new type of online money transfer. Although it’s quite similar to your bank-to-bank money transfer, the sender need not hold the recipient’s bank information, but just an email-id. Thus, it’s easier than the conventional online transfer process.

5. Wire Transfer

This is one of the most common ways to send money abroad. In this method, once you provide the details of the bank and beneficiary to your money transfer provider (e.g., Western Union or ICICI Bank Money2India), they will generate a deposit slip and share with you. You need to submit that slip to your local bank in the USA to initiate the fund's transfer to the money transfer provider. Your local bank will initiate the fund's transfer to the money transfer provider through its correspondent bank. Once your money transfer provider (Western Union or ICICI Bank Money2India) receives the funds, they will initiate the process of transferring money to your beneficiary’s bank account in India. This process may generally take a few business days.

6. Personal Cheque

You can write a personal cheque in US Dollar (USD) to the beneficiary in India. The beneficiary can deposit the cheque to a bank in India. However, not all the banks in India accept foreign cheques. This is considered as the safest option as the cheques written to a person can’t be cashed by anyone else. Thus, there are no possibilities of cheques being misused here. But, you must also note that the cheque cannot be cashed immediately by the beneficiary as bank verification is required and the beneficiary may have to pay an additional fee for the USD to INR conversion.

7. Cash deposit

With some of the money transfer providers, you can directly deposit cash at any of their branches in the USA. Once they receive the cash, they initiate the fund's transfer to India, through ACH or electronic funds transfer.

8. Debit or credit cards

These days, many money transfer providers have started accepting funds through a debit or credit card at additional cost. Once the transaction is authorised, they initiate the fund's transfer to India, through ACH or electronic funds transfer. This is one of the fastest ways to transfer money to India.

Conclusion

So, these are the many different payment options to initiate a money transfer from the USA to India which vary in term of speed, convenience and cost. Choose the one which best meets your need.

Disclaimer: Please note that it is our endeavor to provide unbiased and accurate information but cannot guarantee it to be perfect, so please do your bit of research and use the information from this email at your own risk.