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I have been in USA for the past 1.5 years (on H1B and currently not processing GC) and now I want to send a portion of my savings to a Bank in India (for example State Bank of India, HDFC).

I have savings account in both of the banks mentioned above. Can I use services such as Xoom to transfer from my US bank to the savings account in India, or do I need to change the account type from savings to a different one, as money is being transferred from outside India.

This will be the first time I am sending, so before using any of these services, I wanted to clear my queries.

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  • have you checked with your bank, usually its best to ask them how they handle such transactions to be sure
    – GµårÐïåñ
    Commented Oct 9, 2015 at 17:30
  • Since you are a non-resident of India (perhaps temporarily), you need to convert all your savings accounts in India to NRO (savings) accounts. NRO stands for NonResident Ordinary.
    – Dilip Sarwate
    Commented Oct 9, 2015 at 18:20
  • I checked with SBI and they are saying that I can transfer the amount without any issues (through the person seemed not confident), so while searching I saw that there are different types of accounts like NRI/NRE/NRO, so I got confused.
    – Soumya
    Commented Oct 9, 2015 at 18:21
  • @DilipSarwate Can this convertion of Savings to NRO be done online or do I need to go to India and then convert the account.
    – Soumya
    Commented Oct 9, 2015 at 18:23

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Legally if you are NRI for tax purposes, then you are required to convert all your Savings Account into NRO accounts.

For tax purposes it be advisable to open an NRE account.

Depending on the Banks policy you can convert the account into NRO by submitted a scanned copy of passport along with the Visa page.

You can transfer money from US to any Account in India [Savings/Current/NRO/NRE] using xoom or any other remittance services remit2india, money2india etc.

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  • Can the convertion be done, outside India? I will check with the banks and confirm. If I get any clarifications, I will try to update the thread for future members with the same question.
    – Soumya
    Commented Oct 12, 2015 at 14:23
  • @Soumya as indicated in my answer, this depends on Banks policy. Quite a few Banks do this via scanned copies. Some insist on physical copies to be arranged via relatives / friends some are OK with a letter from Indian Embassy abroad. Essentially once the Bank is convinced you are Non-Resident, they have to by RBI regulation convert it else the Bank is in breach.
    – Dheer
    Commented Oct 12, 2015 at 15:08

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