RBI releases discussion paper on forex trading platform for retail participants

RBI releases discussion paper on forex trading platform for retail participants

The Reserve Bank of India on Thursday released a discussion paper on foreign exchange trading platform for retail participation seeking comments from stakeholders. The central bank proposes that Clearing Corporation of India (CCIL), which operates an interbank USD/INR spot trading platform named FX-CLEAR, would develop an electronic spot trading platform for retail customers modelled on their existing platform. The paper proposes to extend the existing FX-CLEAR platform to retail customers of the FX-CLEAR member banks through an internet based application. The retail market will be separate from the interbank market but will have the same market hours.

Customers can directly execute the trade up to the limit by placing bid/offer quotes and trades will be executed by anonymous order matching on price-time priority. The minimum order size is proposed at $1,000 and in multiples of $500 while the maximum order size is intended to be $500,000. The central bank indicated that direct execution by the customer is likely to bring down the cost of transactions as there is no market risk to the customer’s bank apart from settling the inter-bank trade through the CCIL settlement system.