The RBI Alert List, Explained for Indian Traders

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is the authority that publishes the Alert List. The list is titled as a register of entities not authorised to deal in foreign exchange under FEMA or to operate an electronic trading platform.

The list is maintained as a public document. Its purpose is to make visible the names of entities that the RBI has not authorised for foreign exchange dealing or for running an electronic trading platform. The RBI updates the list as and when it adds names, so the version you see on any given day is a snapshot, not a permanent record.

For a resident in India, the practical point is that the RBI is the source to consult. Other regulators in other countries keep their own registers, but for foreign exchange dealing under Indian law, the RBI's list is the one that matters.

Being named on the RBI Alert List means the entity is not authorised by the RBI to deal in foreign exchange under FEMA or to operate an electronic trading platform. FEMA is the law that governs foreign exchange transactions by Indian residents.

Under FEMA, a resident is generally permitted to deal in foreign exchange only for purposes that the law allows, and only through authorised persons. An entity on the Alert List is not one of those authorised persons. The RBI states that a resident trading outside permitted purposes or on an unauthorised platform is liable under FEMA.

This is a legal status, not a comment on how a platform behaves day to day. The list does not describe a platform's payouts, its software, its customer service or its deposit methods. It records one thing: the absence of RBI authorisation for foreign exchange dealing or electronic trading platform operation.

The RBI Alert List is not a statement that every named entity is a scam, that it is unsafe to visit, or that it has defrauded anyone. The RBI does not use the list to make those claims. The list is a register of authorisation status under FEMA, and nothing more.

Equally, the list is not a certificate of approval for anyone who is absent from it. An entity that does not appear on the list has not necessarily been authorised by the RBI. The RBI itself states that the list is not exhaustive. That means there can be entities dealing in foreign exchange or operating electronic trading platforms without RBI authorisation that have not yet been added to the list.

So the list works in one direction only. Being on it tells you the RBI has not authorised the entity. Being off it tells you nothing about whether the RBI has authorised the entity. You cannot infer approval from absence.

The RBI's own statement on the Alert List says it is not exhaustive. As of 19 November 2025, the list contained 95 entities. That figure is a count of the names published on that date, not a claim that only 95 unauthorised entities exist in the world.

The reason this matters is practical. A resident who checks the list, does not find a particular name, and concludes the entity is authorised has drawn a conclusion the RBI itself does not support. The absence of a name is not evidence of authorisation.

Because the list is not exhaustive, it should be treated as one input among several. It tells you what the RBI has recorded so far. It does not promise completeness, and the RBI does not present it as a complete picture of every entity dealing in foreign exchange without authorisation.

The only reliable way to check the RBI Alert List is to open the RBI's own website and read the list as published there. Do not rely on a screenshot, a forwarded message, or a summary on a third-party site. The RBI updates the list, and only the version on the RBI's site is current.

A resident in India has obligations under FEMA that exist independently of the list. You are responsible for dealing in foreign exchange only for permitted purposes and only through authorised persons. If you trade on a platform that is not authorised, the fact that you did not check the list does not remove the liability the RBI describes.

So the practical sequence is: check the register yourself, on the RBI's site, at the time you are considering a transaction. If a name is on the list, the RBI has not authorised it. If a name is not on the list, do not treat that as approval. Your own obligation under FEMA remains yours to meet.