RBI Purpose Code List 2026: All 297 Codes, Inward and Outward

Every foreign currency payment that crosses an Indian bank carries a five character purpose code. Your bank puts it on the transaction whether you choose it or not, and it is the single field that decides how RBI classifies your money in India's balance of payments.

Here is the complete current list. All 297 codes, both directions, in RBI's own wording.

TL;DR

• There are 297 codes: 138 inward (P), 136 outward (S), and 23 cover page codes that only banks use for fortnightly aggregates.
• P means money into India, S means money out. The letter describes the bank's side of the trade, not yours, so an exporter being paid uses a P code.
• The annexure most sites quote has been withdrawn since 2012. RBI PDFs 52220 and 52221 are stamped Withdrawn. The current list is Annex I to A.P. (DIR Series) Circular No. 84 dated 29 February 2012, effective 1 April 2012.
• Three things changed in that revision and are still published wrong elsewhere. Group 04, Communication Services, was abolished, so S0401 to S0404 no longer exist. Merchanting became a goods flow, S0108 and P0108, not S1001 and P1001. Reinsurance folded into S0603.
• The codes most Indian businesses need: S0101 advance payment for imports, S0102 settling an import invoice, P0802 software consultancy, P0807 off-site software exports, P1401 salary from a foreign employer, S0023 for LRS.
• One trap. In group 10 the P and S numbers stop mirroring each other. Commission agent services is P1019 inbound but S1020 outbound, and three more behave the same way.

Search the full list here, then read on for what the codes mean and how to pick between the ones that look similar.

What a purpose code actually is

A purpose code tells RBI why foreign exchange moved. It is not a tax field, it is not a customs field, and it does not by itself decide whether your receipt is taxable. It is a statistical classification that feeds India's balance of payments, compiled under the IMF's Balance of Payments and International Investment Position Manual.

That statistical origin explains most of what feels strange about the list. Codes are grouped the way an economist groups trade flows, not the way a business thinks about its own invoices. There is a code for museums and archival services and no single obvious code for "I am a freelancer and somebody in Texas paid me". The list was never designed around your use case.

It matters anyway, for three practical reasons. Your bank cannot release the funds without one. The code drives which documents the bank asks you for, because an export receipt needs different paperwork from a gift. And the code sits on your FIRA, which is the document your CA and any future auditor will read.

How to read the code

Every code is five characters: one letter and four digits.

The letter is the direction, from the bank's point of view, not yours.

• P means a purchase of foreign exchange by the bank, which is money coming into India. Inward remittance. You are receiving.
• S means a sale of foreign exchange by the bank, which is money leaving India. Outward remittance. You are paying.

This trips people up constantly. If you are an exporter being paid by a US client, you want a P code, even though from where you sit it feels like a sale.

The first two digits are the purpose group. 00 is capital account, 01 is goods, 02 is transport, 08 is technology and telecom, 10 is other business services, and so on up to 17.

The last two digits are the serial position inside that group. They carry no independent meaning, and, as you will see further down, they do not reliably match between the P and S lists.

The source problem: which annexure is current

This is worth three paragraphs because it is the reason so many purpose code pages are wrong.

Search for the RBI purpose code list and you will be pointed at two PDFs on the RBI site, numbered 52220 and 52221. Large, credible sites link to them. Both are stamped Withdrawn on every page.

They are not merely re-filed. They are genuinely out of date, and you can prove it from the contents rather than the stamp. Neither file contains S0807, the code for off-site software imports. Neither contains S1014 through S1023, which cover engineering, tax consulting, market research, publishing, mining and commission agent services. Neither contains S1601 or S1701, or the whole S1408 to S1412 block that banks use for FDI dividends and profit. Those codes are in use every day.

The current list is Annex I to A.P. (DIR Series) Circular No. 84 dated February 29, 2012, reference RBI/2011-12/413, titled "Compilation of R-Returns: Reporting under FETERS". It took effect for transactions performed on and after 1 April 2012, and it is still cited as a source circular in RBI's current Master Direction on Export of Goods and Services. That circular is the source for everything below.

One thing it is not: the Master Direction on Reporting under FEMA. That document, updated 24 June 2026, contains the reporting forms and returns but no purpose codes at all. If somebody sends you there, they have not opened it.

What the 2012 revision changed

The revision moved Indian reporting from the IMF's fifth edition manual to its sixth. Three changes matter if you are reading an older list.

Group 04, Communication Services, was abolished. S0401 postal, S0402 courier, S0403 telecommunication and S0404 satellite no longer exist. Postal and courier moved into group 02, Transport. Telecommunication and satellite moved into group 08, which was renamed from "Computer & Information Services" to "Telecommunication, Computer & Information Services" and gained S0808 and S0809. Several major published lists still show the old four as current.

Merchanting moved from services into goods. Under the sixth edition manual, buying from one non-resident and selling to another without the goods entering India is a goods transaction, not a service. So S1001 became S0108 and P1001 became P0108, both sitting in the goods groups.

Insurance codes were consolidated. S0604 and S0606 are gone. Reinsurance folded into S0603, whose description now reads "Other general insurance premium including reinsurance premium; and term life insurance premium". Claim settlement split into S0607 and S0608.

Two smaller ones worth knowing: the old combined stevedoring code S0213 split into S0214 for shipping and S0215 for airlines, and the old catch-all S1019 was replaced by S1099 so that S1020 to S1023 could take over the vacated numbers.

Complete list: inward remittance, P codes

138 codes. Use these when money is coming into India. Descriptions are RBI's own, reproduced without editing, including the places where RBI's punctuation and spacing are untidy.

Group 00, Capital Account

Group 00, Financial Account

Foreign Direct Investment

Foreign Portfolio Investment

External Commercial Borrowings

Short term credits

Banking Capital

Financial Derivatives and Others

External Assistance

Group 01, Exports of Goods

Two things here catch people out. P0106 no longer exists; the old code for converting overdue export bills was dropped. And Nepal and Bhutan are carved out. P0101 through P0105 all say "other than Nepal and Bhutan", and receipts from those two countries go to P0109 instead.

The asterisk on P0108 is RBI's own footnote: "'Merchanting' here refers to purchase/sale of goods from/to a non-resident combined with subsequent resale of the same goods to another non-resident without goods being present in the compiling economy (resident's economy). Essentially, goods transaction would be termed as 'merchanting' if goods acquired do not enter the territory of the compiling (resident's) economy and secondly, goods being acquired do not undergo any transformation before being resold or repurchased".

Group 02, Transport

Group 03, Travel

There is no P0303. Pilgrimage exists as an outward code, S0303, but not as an inward one.

Group 05, Construction Services

Group 06, Insurance and Pension Services

Group 07, Financial Services

Group 08, Telecommunication, Computer & Information Services

This is the group most Indian software and services exporters land in. The distinction that matters is P0802 versus P0807. P0802 is consultancy and implementation, explicitly "other than those covered in SOFTEX form". P0807 is off-site software exports. If your contract is a SOFTEX filing, you are not in P0802.

Group 09, Charges for the use of intellectual property n.i.e

Group 10, Other Business Services

Group 11, Personal, Cultural & Recreational services

Group 12, Government not included elsewhere

Group 13, Secondary Income

Group 14, Primary Income

P1401, compensation of employees, is the code for salary. If you are resident in India and employed by a company abroad, your salary arrives under P1401, not under any of the services codes. This is one of the most commonly miscoded receipts in the whole list, because the money often looks like a consulting fee to whoever is tagging it.

Group 15, Others

Group 16, Maintenance and repair services n.i.e

Group 17, Manufacturing services

Complete list: outward remittance, S codes

136 codes. Use these when money is leaving India.

Group 00, Capital Account

"Investment Grand" is RBI's own typo for "Grant" and it is reproduced here as printed, because banks match against the official wording.

Group 00, Financial Account

Foreign Direct Investments

Foreign Portfolio Investments

External Commercial Borrowings

Short term Loans

Banking Capital

Financial Derivatives and Others

S0023 is the LRS code. It has no inward twin, because LRS is an outbound scheme only.

External Assistance

Group 01, Imports

The asterisk on S0108 is RBI's own footnote, the same one that applies to P0108: "'Merchanting' here refers to purchase/sale of goods from/to a non-resident combined with subsequent resale of the same goods to another non-resident without goods being present in the compiling economy (resident's economy)."

S0101 versus S0102 is the single most used decision on this page. S0101 is an advance, paid before the goods arrive. S0102 settles an invoice for goods already received. Getting this wrong is the most common reason an import remittance gets queried, because the bank's document expectations differ: an advance payment brings advance remittance conditions and a Bill of Entry follow-up obligation with it.

Group 02, Transport

S0213 does not exist. It was split into S0214 and S0215 in the 2012 revision.

Group 03, Travel

S0302, the old Basic Travel Quota code, is not in the current list. Leisure travel goes to S0306, which also absorbs international credit card settlements.

Group 05, Construction Services

Group 06, Insurance and Pension Services

S0604 and S0606 no longer exist.

Group 07, Financial Services

Group 08, Telecommunication, Computer & Information Services

S0807 is the code for buying software from abroad, and it is the one most often missed because it did not exist in the withdrawn annexure. If you are paying an overseas SaaS vendor for software delivered electronically, this group is where you belong, not group 10.

Group 09, Charges for the use of intellectual property n.i.e

Group 10, Other Business Services

S1001 moved to S0108. S1012 and S1019 do not exist.

Group 11, Personal, Cultural & Recreational services

The outward list has no S1102, S1104, S1105 or S1106, even though the inward list has P1104, P1105 and P1106.

Group 12, Government not included elsewhere

Group 13, Secondary Income

Group 14, Primary Income

S1404, S1406 and S1407 were replaced by the more granular S1408 to S1412 block. A page that still tells you to use S1406 for repatriation of profits is reading the withdrawn list.

Group 15, Others

Group 16, Maintenance and repair services n.i.e

Group 17, Manufacturing services

Cover page codes you will never select

There is a third set of 23 codes in the same annexure. You will occasionally see them quoted as if they were transaction codes. They are not. They are aggregates a bank reports on the cover page of its R-Return, summing a whole fortnight.

If a provider tells you your transaction was booked under S0190, they mean it fell below the five lakh individual reporting threshold and was reported in aggregate. It is not a description of what you bought.

Where P and S codes stop mirroring each other

The most expensive assumption on this page is that you can take a code, swap the letter, and get the equivalent in the other direction. It works for most of the list. In group 10 it breaks, four times in a row.

The inward list runs one number ahead of the outward list from P1019 onward, because the two lists retired different codes. Swap the letter on any of these four and you get a real code that means something else. P1020 is wholesale and retail; S1020 is commission agent. Both exist, so nothing bounces, and the misclassification sits quietly on your FIRA.

Codes people search for that do not exist

Some codes are searched for regularly and are simply not in the current list. If a page shows you one, that page is quoting the withdrawn annexure.

Choosing the right code

Three questions, in order.

Which direction is the money going? Into India is P, out of India is S. Direction is from the bank's perspective, so an exporter receiving payment uses a P code.

Is it goods, a service, income, or capital? Goods sit in group 01. Services run from group 02 to group 17. Income, meaning salary, interest, dividends and profit, sits in groups 13 and 14. Anything that changes who owns an asset is group 00.

Within the group, what did the contract actually say? This is where accuracy is won or lost. The list rewards reading your own invoice. Software consultancy and off-site software export are different codes. Advance payment and invoice settlement are different codes. Salary and consulting fees are different codes.

If nothing fits, use the group's catch-all rather than forcing a neighbouring code. P1099 and S1099 exist for that reason, and "other services not included elsewhere" is an honest answer that will not contradict your paperwork later.

What happens when the code is wrong

Not a penalty, usually. The realistic consequences are slower and more annoying than that.

The bank queries the remittance. The documents you submitted do not match what the code implies, so the transaction sits while somebody asks for a clarification. This is the most common outcome and it costs days.

Your FIRA says the wrong thing. The FIRA is the document your CA uses to support the treatment of that receipt, and an auditor or an assessing officer reads it years later with no memory of what actually happened. A software export coded as a gift is a conversation you do not want to be having in year three.

Your export obligation does not close properly. If an export receipt is coded as something other than an export receipt, it may not match against the shipping bill, which leaves an entry outstanding in the bank's reconciliation and eventually on the EDPMS side.

Correcting a code after the fact is possible, through the AD bank that handled the transaction, but it is a manual request and it is far more work than getting it right at submission.

Paying an overseas supplier?

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Purpose code and FEMA documentation are handled inside the transaction rather than chased afterwards, you get a live FX rate, and the paperwork is closed out with the payment. Built for Indian businesses paying across borders.

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AD1 accounts are for Indian entities.

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