Citi India has launched new digital cross-border payment solution that eliminates the need for multiple, underlying physical documents for cross-border trade payments. The solution aims to substantially reduces time, effort and cost of each transaction by facilitating quicker trade payments. 

With Open Account import payments, Citi’s clients can now directly share import payment information with the bank, by simply quoting Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) Import Data Payment and Monitoring System (IDPMS) number, as against the earlier process of sharing multiple documents to support a single payment. This function will be made available on Citi’s online banking platform CitiDirect BE® for clients to initiate and authorise payments.

Development and usage

Citi India worked closely with the Government of India and used RBI’s IDPMS platform that digitally tracks imports to in this solution. Citi aim to reduce for cross-border payments to less than three hours from the earlier same day processing.

Debopama Sen, Head of Treasury and Trade Solutions, Citi South Asia said, "This is a huge step towards simplifying cross-border trade payments which significantly improves efficiencies for our customers and enhances the digital experience.”

Early users include Sony who adopted the system to take advantage of the costs savings in physical record keeping.