Price Transparency in FX Markets: RBI's Proposed Mandate on Transaction-Cost Disclosure

The foreign-exchange market in India has long operated under a disclosure regime that obliged authorised dealers to reveal only the mid-market mark or bid-offer spread when transacting in derivatives with retail users. While this partial transparency, introduced in January 2024, addressed one layer of information asymmetry, it left untouched the cash, tom and spot segments where retail remitters incur the bulk of hidden charges. Recognising that opacity in upfront pricing can distort consumer choice and impede effective competition, the Reserve Bank of India has now moved to extend the disclosure obligation to the most routinely used FX contracts. On 9 December 2025 the Bank published a draft circular inviting comments from banks, market participants and the public until 9 January 2026, signalling a decisive shift toward an “all-in cost” paradigm for retail foreign-exchange transactions.