Sending money to India from the USA.

You need three things: a ComplyRemit account with identity verification complete, a US checking account linked as your funding source, and the recipient's payout details — either their UPI ID, or their Indian bank account number together with the branch IFSC code. Nothing else is required for a first transfer.

Identity verification is a one-time step. It runs through our verification partner Persona and usually asks for a government-issued photo ID, most often a driver's license or state ID, and confirmation of your address.

The funding account is linked through Plaid, which means you sign in to your bank rather than typing an account and routing number. The account has to be in your own name: the name on it is checked against the name on your verified identity, and a mismatch is the single most common reason a first transfer stalls.

For the recipient, a UPI ID is the shorter path. It is one string, it resolves to their account on the Indian side, and it removes the two fields people most often get wrong.

Add the recipient, enter the amount you want to send, and review the screen that shows the rate and what they receive. Confirm, and the money is debited from your linked US bank account. You can follow every stage of the transfer from the activity screen until it is paid out.

The review screen is the one that matters. It shows the amount you are sending, the exchange rate being applied, and the amount that arrives in rupees. That is the number the recipient gets — it is not an estimate that is revised later.

Adding a recipient asks for their city as well as their payout details. That is a compliance requirement rather than a formality, and a recipient saved without one cannot be paid.

Transfers are priced at the mid-market exchange rate — the rate you would find quoted on Google — with any fee disclosed on the review screen before you confirm. There is no separate margin added to the rate, which is where most of the cost of a transfer usually hides.

When you compare providers, compare the amount the recipient receives, not the advertised fee. A zero-fee transfer at a rate two percent below mid-market costs more on a $1,000 send than a $5 fee at the real rate.

Funds are typically delivered to the recipient within 48 hours of the debit clearing from your US bank account. The debit itself is the slow half: an ACH pull from a US checking account settles over one to three business days, and weekends and bank holidays do not count.

Customers may become eligible for instant transfers, under ten minutes end to end, once they have enough transaction history. Until then, plan around the bank debit rather than around the payout.

The longer version of this, including what to check when a transfer is late, is in the guide on how long international transfers take.

Per-transaction and aggregate limits apply, and they are shown in the app before you confirm a transfer. They are set by an operator and change with regulatory requirements and your account history, so the number in the app is the authoritative one rather than any figure quoted elsewhere.

If you need a higher limit than the app allows, contact support rather than splitting a large transfer into several smaller ones — a run of structured transfers is exactly the pattern anti-money-laundering monitoring is built to flag.