Kotak Mahindra Bank Forex & Exchange Rate Today: TT Buying, TT Selling, Card Rate & Charges

Kotak Mahindra Bank's USD to INR rate today is ₹94.00 for money coming in.

Every rate below comes from the sheet Kotak Mahindra Bank published on 20 August 2026 at 09:00 AM, refreshed here twice a day.

Kotak Mahindra Bank publishes a new rate sheet every working day and revises it as the market moves. Money arriving from abroad is converted at its TT (telegraphic transfer) buying rate, which sits below the mid-market rate. That gap is the markup, and it is separate from GST on the conversion.

Kotak Mahindra Bank's USD TT buying rate today is ₹94.00. If money is coming in to you, that is the rate that applies.

This sheet covers card rates as published. For larger transfers, contact the branch or your relationship manager.

Source: Kotak Mahindra Bank Forex Card Rates, published by Kotak Mahindra Bank itself. Rates are indicative and subject to change with market movements. The rate that applies is the one prevailing when your account is credited.

Which rate applies depends on what you are doing, not on which one you saw first.

Kotak Mahindra Bank's TT buying rate for USD is ₹94.00, also written as TTBR, short for TT buying rate.

• Mid-market reference: ₹95.75
• Kotak Mahindra Bank TT buying: ₹94.00
• Gap: 1.83%, about ₹17,500 on a USD 10,000 invoice

Kotak Mahindra Bank's TT selling rate for USD is ₹98.36. This is what you pay when the bank sells you foreign currency, so it applies to money going out, not to export earnings coming in.

The gap between the two TT rates is ₹4.36 per dollar, or 4.6% of the buying rate. That spread is what the bank keeps.

Kotak Mahindra Bank publishes these on the daily sheet it calls its "Forex Card Rates". The card and currency-note columns each carry a different rate from the TT rate.

Card and cash rates carry wider margins than TT rates. Do not use a card rate to estimate what an inward wire will fetch.

On USD the card cash-out rate is ₹0.45 below the TT buying rate, and the currency-note rate is ₹1.09 below it.

The exchange-rate margin is the largest cost, but not the only one. As of July 2026, the fees an exporter or freelancer is likely to meet are set out below. One easy-to-miss item is the lifting charge banks can apply when clearing a foreign-currency cheque or draft.

Receiving money looks free because there is no headline fee. The margin baked into the TT buying rate does the quiet work instead.

Banks revise these schedules periodically, so verify the current numbers on Kotak's own fees-and-charges page before you rely on a figure.

If you are comparing across providers, indus ind bank forex rates and karur vysya bank forex rates follow a similar TT-and-card-rate structure and are worth checking side by side.

The Kotak forex card works differently from a debit or credit card abroad, and the difference is worth understanding because a large share of "kotak forex card charges" searches are trying to compare the two.

When you spend in a currency already loaded on the card, there is no markup on that transaction. That is the card's main advantage over a regular card, which typically adds a 3.5% foreign transaction markup on every overseas spend.

If you spend in a currency you have not loaded, a cross-currency markup of about 3.5% applies, because the card converts on the fly. So the saving depends entirely on loading the right currencies before you travel.

Other card charges, as of July 2026, are an issuance fee of ₹250, a reload fee of ₹75, and ATM withdrawal fees abroad of roughly USD 2 or EUR 1.5 per transaction. The rate loaded onto the card is the card rate, which sits wider of the mid-market rate than the TT rate does.

Every foreign exchange conversion in India attracts 18% GST. It is charged on a "value of supply" the RBI defines in slabs (in force since 1 July 2017), not on your full transfer amount, so it stays modest even on large sums.

The takeaway is simple. GST is a known, capped, and comparatively small cost. The exchange-rate margin is the variable you can actually influence.

The rate is only part of the bill. If money comes in from abroad every month, four other things cost you money or time. None of them are on Kotak Mahindra Bank's rate sheet.

To be fair: this does not beat your bank at everything. If your current account, overdraft and trade limits are all with Kotak Mahindra Bank, keeping everything in one place may matter more than any row above. This adds up when money comes in from abroad a few times a month, every month.

Say a client sends you USD 10,000 for a completed project. On the sheet Kotak Mahindra Bank published on 20 August 2026 at 09:00 AM, its TT buying rate was ₹94.00. The mid-market reference that day was ₹95.75.

• At the mid-market rate: 10,000 × 95.75 = ₹9,57,500
• At Kotak Mahindra Bank's TT buying rate: 10,000 × 94.00 = ₹9,40,000
• Difference from the rate margin alone: ₹17,500, before GST and any certificate fee.

That ₹17,500 is the spread, not a fee you agreed to, and it recurs on every transfer settled at card rates.

One note on the reference: it is a daily rate, so the exact gap on your own transfer is the one on your credit advice.

A platform fee works differently. On the same invoice, Xflow's Growth plan charges 0.4% of the transfer value, about $40, with no markup on the mid-market rate, so the cost sits in a visible fee instead of inside the rate. Both that fee and the bank figures above are before GST, which applies either way.

Kotak Mahindra Bank publishes its own "Forex Card Rates", and that document is the authority on the rate you will be given, not any figure quoted elsewhere. It is a web page the bank refreshes in place, so there is no file to keep.

Open it here: Kotak Mahindra Bank Forex Card Rates. The bank replaces it each working day, so the link always resolves to the current sheet, and the copy the figures above come from was published on 20 August 2026 at 09:00 AM.

A "forex rate" is the price of one currency in another at a given moment. Banks quote it against the interbank rate, the wholesale price at which large institutions trade, then add a margin before passing it to you.

Kotak publishes several rates because each transaction type carries a different margin. If you want the plain-English version of how these numbers are built, start with forex rates.

The rates Kotak shows are indicative. The rate that actually applies is the one prevailing when your account is debited or credited, so a morning figure can shift by the time your transfer settles.

TT stands for telegraphic transfer, the electronic movement of money between banks across borders. Kotak uses two TT rates and a separate card rate.

• TT buying rate: the rate at which Kotak buys foreign currency from you and pays out rupees. This applies when you receive an inward remittance from a client abroad.
• TT selling rate: the rate at which Kotak sells you foreign currency, used when you send money out, including through Click2Remit.
• Card rate: used for the forex card and cash, and it carries a wider margin than the TT rates.

For anyone receiving export income, the TT buying rate is the number that matters. A telegraphic transfer is the default rail behind most bank-to-bank inward payments. If you are weighing a wire transfer against faster domestic rails for the rupee leg, a swift vs local transfer comparison is worth a look. To see how the rates compare on the same day, here is an illustrative snapshot (as of July 2026).

Search "USD to INR" and you see the mid-market rate, the midpoint between global buy and sell prices. That is the fair reference rate, and no bank pays it out in full. The difference comes from three layers.

• Spread: Kotak applies a margin between the interbank rate and the rate it gives you, around 1.5% to 2% below mid-market on inward transfers, though it varies by day, currency, and relationship. This is the foreign exchange markup, rarely shown as a line item. Banks and processors describe it differently, but it is the same fcy conversion markup fee under a different name.
• Cards and cash cost more: the forex card and cash carry a wider margin than TT rates, and a regular card adds a 3.5% markup on top.
• Dynamic currency conversion: paying in rupees at an overseas terminal, rather than the local currency, lets the merchant set the rate, which is usually worse. Declining it keeps you on the network rate.

The cleanest way to see the true price is to compare the applied rate against the live mid-market rate on the same day.

If you are benchmarking Indian banks, icici bank forex rates use the same spread-and-GST structure and are worth a side-by-side look.

Xflow is a cross-border payments platform built for Indian businesses and freelancers receiving money from abroad. The core difference is the reference rate.

Kotak marks up a hidden interbank rate. Xflow converts at the live mid-market rate and charges a transparent, visible fee, so you can see exactly what conversion costs. Its published pricing, as of July 2026, is below.

You keep close to the mid-market payout minus a fee you can see, instead of losing the spread you never agreed to. On costs like these, Xflow says businesses can meaningfully cut FX costs, and the gap widens as volumes rise. Settlement is next business day (T+1), and each payment comes with an auto-issued eFIRA.

A few honest caveats belong here. If you already hold accounts, overdraft lines, and trade facilities with Kotak, consolidating can matter more than a few paise on rate.

For one-off or very small transfers, a flat fee can outweigh the rate saving. Run your own numbers on a typical invoice first, and read how to reduce international payment fees to see where the real leakage sits. For regular mid-to-large export receipts, the platform is used for cross-border payments for service exporters.

Xflow's receiving accounts are built for exactly this: automated rate transparency and GST-ready eFIRA on every export receipt, so you are not left reconciling a bank rate sheet by hand.

This is the fear that stops most exporters from switching, and it is worth addressing head-on. Receiving through a regulated platform does not break your regulatory trail.

Xflow holds final RBI Payment Aggregator – Cross Border (PA-CB) authorisation for both exports and imports (as of February 2026), works with AD-1 banks, and auto-issues an eFIRA for each payment.

Your purpose codes, GST refund workflow, and downstream reporting continue as before, and the bank FIRC route remains available. Compliance stays intact; the paperwork simply becomes less manual.

Kotak Mahindra Bank publishes its rate sheet every working day and revises it intraday. On 20 August 2026 its USD TT buying rate was ₹94.00, about 1.83% below a daily mid-market reference rate of ₹95.75.

If you receive export income, the TT buying rate is the one that applies to you. Check it on the sheet, then check your Foreign Inward Remittance Advice (FIRA) to see what rate actually applied.