Money
Once the core administration of having your visa and e-FRRO is complete then the next most important thing will be to get a bank account. My personal experience is with HSBC India, as I bank with them in the UK, so I thought most sensible to do likewise here in India. As it turns out, aside from being able to see the balances on my HSBC app for both my UK and Indian accounts there really is not much other benefit, so I would suggest just choose whichever bank is most personally convenient as each brand will come with their own individual merits.
Depending on your level of expat income the banks will either bend over backwards for you or treat you with broad indifference. Private banking with HSBC is good on the one hand as I have the mobile (read mobile as WhatsApp as that is how everything here is done in India) number of my ‘banker’, and I can message them for various matters if needed.
However, there is still a huge bias towards bureaucracy here, and physical forms are often required to complete certain activities. Each bank is different so you will need to check with whomever you select as to their practices but speaking from a HSBC perspective if I want to transfer money back to the UK it can be done on the app online in real time (during banking hours), although this will be subject to TCS (Tax Collected at Source) which has just gone up to 20% of the transaction value. It was formerly 5% but changed in summer 2023. This stems from the underlying robustness to the rules in India which govern to seek to prevent tax avoidance. This TCS is reclaimable at the end of the tax year in your tax return, and from experience I know this can be paid back once your overall tax liability is calculated. In my first year I elected to just do it all online as it was so much easier, and just pay the 5% as I was assured it could be claimed back so I considered it as a way of saving. Thankfully I can attest this is true, so assuming all above board and your taxes are up to date then this can be done. However, now it has risen to 20% I personally have decided to go down the form filling road each time I do a transfer. This is the only way to avoid paying TCS.
This requires a completed and printed paper form to be completed of about 4 pages in length, and then evidence of how the funds in your account have been obtained to be provided. So, each month I fill in this form and provide a copy of my payslip. This has to be sent hard copy, but the bank now accepts a PDF scanned version with assurance I will courier them the original afterwards. Once they have the PDF then the transaction usually occurs the next day once it has all been verified. But this is cumbersome as requires a form to be physically printed, scanned, and returned in some manner. But doing it this way avoids the 20% TCS, which even if it can be reclaimed is still potentially a sizeable chunk of funds to sacrifice to government coffers for potentially a year or so.
I caveat other banks have different processes, and I know the ICICI bank does permit online transactions without TCS collection provided payslips are uploaded online etc. There may be better ways with different banks, and so my recommendation is to research this properly before selecting the bank that is right for you. In hindsight I would likely have chosen ICICI bank had I known all this in advance, rather than just assuming HSBC India would be seamless with HSBC UK. That said the service I receive from them is good, and they assist well with this paper admin. Each bank will have relative strengths/weaknesses and it is not my intention to recommend any over another, simply to advise good research in advance.
Aside from having a normal bank account, and Indian credit card, which is pretty standard and normally offered, the other key account I recommend to anyone is Paytm. This is a different account which is linked to your bank account through your mobile phone. It is simple to set up (once you have a mobile phone) and is just an app to download and configure. You can then link your bank account to the Paytm account via the app. It is advisable then to keep a small ‘Paytm balance’ on the account and this can be easily topped up via the app from your linked bank account. It is also a good way to transfer funds to other people, as having the app allows a QR code to be generated which other people can scan and pay you via, which will then drop straight into your bank account. Paytm is one of the better systems in India which the rest of the world could learn from. It is common to pay for Uber via Paytm, and most retailers will display a Paytm QR code which you can simply scan from the app to make payment. This even applies to most rickshaws and taxis. While these are likely to prefer cash, it is fairly common to pay via Paytm for such transport and widely accepted. It is quite handy particularly for smaller payments as banks will often dispense 500 INR notes, and if the rickshaw is only 50 INR then change can be a problem. Which leads to the other piece of advice re cash, in that keeping some to hand and having small denominations is recommended.
JC in India 