By Dr. Meena Falor, Co-Founder & Managing Director, EduKonnect
Somewhere in the final month before departure, almost every family asks me the same slightly embarrassed question: “Which forex card should we get?” It’s usually asked after the visa is stamped, the flight is booked, and everyone’s attention has shifted from “will this happen” to “how do we actually get money there.” And it’s a fair question — but it’s also, almost always, the wrong first question. By the time a family is comparing forex card brands, they’ve usually already skipped two earlier decisions that matter more: how the tuition itself gets paid, and how the TCS and LRS rules will actually apply to their remittances over the next two or three years.
This isn’t a comparison chart of card providers — those change every few months and you can find one anywhere online. It’s the sequence I actually walk families through, because getting the order right saves real money, and getting it wrong is one of the more avoidable ways families lose lakhs over the course of a degree.
First: Understand What LRS and TCS Actually Mean for Your Family
Every rupee that leaves India for a foreign purpose — tuition, living expenses, a blocked account, a forex card top-up — moves under the RBI’s Liberalised Remittance Scheme (LRS). Each resident individual can remit up to USD 250,000 per financial year (April to March), and this limit is per person, not per family, which matters more than families initially realise: both parents can each remit their own USD 250,000, effectively giving a family up to USD 500,000 of combined headroom in a year if needed for a particularly expensive program or multiple children.
The tax layer on top of this is Tax Collected at Source (TCS), and this is where Budget 2026 brought real relief. From 1 April 2026, TCS on remittances for education and medical purposes was reduced from 5% to 2%, applicable once total remittances in the financial year cross the ₹10 lakh threshold. Below that threshold, no TCS applies at all. And if the remittance is funded through an education loan from a recognised bank or NBFC, the TCS rate drops further still, to a token rate, regardless of the amount.
One point I repeat in nearly every consultation because families consistently misunderstand it: TCS is not an extra cost. It’s an advance tax, fully reflected in your Form 26AS and fully adjustable against your actual income tax liability when you file your return. Families sometimes panic at the TCS deduction on a large remittance, treating it as money lost, when it’s simply been collected early and needs to be claimed back — which only happens if you actually file for it. I’ve seen families leave real money unclaimed simply because nobody followed up after the return was filed.
How Tuition Should Actually Be Paid — Before You Think About Forex Cards
This is the step most families jump past, and it shouldn’t be. A large one-time tuition payment and a student’s everyday spending abroad are two completely different problems, and they call for different tools.
For the tuition payment itself, most universities across the UK, US, Canada, and Australia now route international payments through a dedicated education payment platform — Flywire is the one you’ll encounter most often — rather than accepting a plain bank wire transfer. These platforms let you pay in INR at a locked-in rate while the university receives the exact amount due in its own currency, with tracking through every stage of the transfer. I generally steer families toward whichever payment route the university itself lists as its preferred method, because it reduces the single biggest risk in this step: a transfer that arrives short of the exact amount due, which can hold up enrolment at exactly the wrong moment.
A traditional bank wire transfer for tuition is still an option and sometimes cheaper on paper, but banks are notorious for opaque exchange rates and correspondent bank charges that only become visible once the transfer has already gone through, and for delays that don’t matter for a holiday but genuinely matter against a tuition deadline. Compare the total landed cost, not just the headline exchange rate, before choosing.
Forex Cards: What They’re Actually For
Once tuition is sorted, the forex card question is really about day-to-day spending abroad — groceries, transport, rent if the landlord accepts card payment, and the general cost of living a student will incur for months at a time.
A forex card is a prepaid card loaded with foreign currency at the exchange rate on the day you load it, which is exactly why it’s the right tool for this job and the wrong tool for a one-time tuition payment: it locks in a rate at loading time rather than protecting you from rate movement over an entire semester. The real comparison that matters is forex card versus a standard Indian debit or credit card used abroad. A standard Indian debit card typically carries a markup of roughly 2.5–3.5% on every foreign transaction, on top of whatever the day’s exchange rate is — money that disappears quietly, transaction by transaction, and adds up over months of daily spending into a genuinely significant sum. A well-chosen forex card, by contrast, can bring that markup down close to zero.
Newer fintech-issued cards (Niyo Global and similar players are the ones I hear about most from recent batches) have pushed markup fees down aggressively, often to zero on everyday spends, while traditional bank-issued cards from providers like HDFC or ICICI tend to sit in the 1.5–2% range but come with the reassurance of a larger branch network if something goes wrong. Specialist forex platforms often sit somewhere in between on cost. None of these rankings are permanent — this segment changes every few months as providers compete on fees — so I’d always tell a family to compare current rates directly rather than relying on which card a senior batch used two years ago.
The Two-Card Rule I Give Every Student
Regardless of which primary forex card a student chooses, I tell every single one of them the same thing before departure: carry a second card as backup, and keep it somewhere physically separate from the first. This isn’t excessive caution — a lost wallet, a blocked card after an unusual transaction pattern, or a fintech app glitch at 11pm on a Sunday when you need to pay rent is a genuinely common situation, not a rare one. A primary forex card for daily spending, plus a backup bank-issued card kept separately, has saved more than one student from a genuinely stressful weekend.
For documentation, keep in mind that loading a forex card above roughly ₹50,000 will usually require the same paperwork as any other LRS remittance — offer letter or I-20, visa copy, and a signed Form A2 — so it’s worth doing your first large load well before departure rather than discovering the document requirement while queuing at the bank the week you’re due to fly.
Cash: How Much, and Why Not More
Families sometimes want to carry a large amount of physical foreign currency “just in case,” and I generally push back on this gently. Beyond covering the first day or two of arrival — an airport transfer, a meal, incidentals before the forex card or local bank account is fully functional — carrying large amounts of cash adds risk without adding much practical benefit, since almost every reasonable expense abroad can be handled by a card once the student has landed and settled in. A modest amount of foreign currency cash for arrival, backed by a properly loaded forex card, covers this far more sensibly than a wallet full of notes.
What I Actually Tell Every Family Before They Buy Anything
Understand your LRS and TCS position before choosing any product. Know whether you’re funding the degree from savings or an education loan, because it changes the TCS rate meaningfully, and know that TCS paid is TCS you can claim back — but only if you actually file for it.
Pay tuition through the university’s preferred payment platform, not a generic bank transfer, unless you’ve genuinely compared the total landed cost of both and confirmed the bank transfer is cheaper and fast enough to meet the deadline.
Treat the forex card decision as separate from the tuition payment decision. They solve different problems and the “best” choice for a one-time large payment is rarely the best choice for two years of daily spending.
Compare current markup rates directly before committing, rather than assuming the card that worked for a friend two years ago is still the cheapest option today — this market moves fast.
Always carry a second card, kept separately from the first. This is the cheapest insurance a student abroad can have, and it costs nothing beyond the small effort of setting it up before departure.
Keep documentation ready before you need it. Offer letter, visa, and Form A2 should be sorted well before your first large forex load or remittance, not assembled under deadline pressure.
Money management abroad isn’t complicated once the sequence is right — sort the tuition payment first, understand the tax mechanics second, and only then choose the card for everyday spending. The families who get this backwards, chasing forex card comparisons before they’ve even worked out how tuition will be paid, are usually the ones who end up making rushed decisions in the final week, and rushed decisions with money rarely turn out to be the cheapest ones.
Co-Founder & Managing Director of EduKonnect, and has guided over 15,000+ students through international admissions over the past two decades.