How INDmoney works for US stocks: GIFT City route, all-in-one wealth, and tax reporting

Why INDmoney's August 2025 switch to GIFT City matters

Until August 2025, INDmoney worked the same way as most other Indian platforms offering US stocks: it sent your money abroad via the Liberalised Remittance Scheme (LRS), your Indian bank collected TCS, and your holdings sat at a US broker-dealer as a foreign asset requiring Schedule FA disclosure.

In August 2025, INDmoney obtained a Global Access Provider (GAP) licence from the International Financial Services Centres Authority (IFSCA) at GIFT City, Gujarat. This changed the mechanics of how your money moves when you buy US stocks through the platform.

Under the GIFT City structure, your funds go to INDmoney's IFSCA-regulated entity inside GIFT City — which, for regulatory purposes, is treated differently from a direct foreign remittance. The prevailing interpretation is that this transfer is not classified as an LRS remittance, which has two significant implications: no TCS is deducted, and the transfer does not count against your $250,000 annual LRS cap.

That is a material difference. An investor putting ₹25L per year into US stocks through an LRS-route platform would see their bank collect 20% TCS on ₹18L of that (₹25L minus the ₹7L threshold) — roughly ₹3.6L locked up until ITR filing. Through the GIFT City route, that TCS hit does not arise under the current interpretation.

The caveat matters: explicit RBI and CBDT circulars specifically addressing GIFT City GAP platforms are limited. The interpretation is reasonable and consistent with how GIFT City is designed to work, but it is not yet as codified as the LRS framework. Investors putting large amounts into the GIFT City route should verify the current regulatory position with a CA.

This guide covers how INDmoney works now — post-August 2025.

Entity structure: SEBI + IFSCA dual registration

INDmoney holds two distinct regulatory registrations relevant to its investment products:

SEBI Investment Adviser (INA100012190): This registration covers INDmoney's Indian market products — mutual fund distribution, Indian stock broking, fixed deposits, and related advisory services. It is the licence that governs INDmoney's India-side business.

IFSCA Global Access Provider (GAP): This is the newer registration, obtained at GIFT City in August 2025. GAP licences allow IFSC-regulated entities to provide Indian residents access to overseas markets through the GIFT City framework, rather than through direct LRS remittances. INDmoney's US stock product now operates under this licence.

This dual-registration structure — SEBI for Indian products, IFSCA for US stocks — is part of what makes INDmoney's all-in-one platform work. Your Indian mutual funds and Indian equities sit under the SEBI-regulated entity. Your US stock investments route through the IFSCA GIFT City entity. Both are visible in the same app.

Two clearing brokers — DriveWealth and Alpaca Securities

INDmoney routes US stock orders through two US broker-dealers:

• DriveWealth LLC — a FINRA-member broker-dealer and familiar name in the Indian US-investing market (Vested also uses DriveWealth as its custodian)
• Alpaca Securities LLC — also FINRA-member and SIPC-covered, and a significant infrastructure provider for API-first investing platforms globally

Having two clearing brokers is unusual among Indian platforms — most use a single US counterpart. The operational rationale is redundancy: if one platform experiences downtime or settlement issues, order flow continues through the other. For a platform at INDmoney's scale — serving a large user base across multiple product categories simultaneously — this kind of infrastructure depth matters.

Both DriveWealth and Alpaca are covered by SIPC up to $500,000 per account (including up to $250,000 in cash). SIPC protects against broker failure, not against market losses in the value of your holdings.

The GIFT City route: how your money moves

The mechanics of the GIFT City transfer are different from what most Indian investors are familiar with from LRS-route platforms.

On an LRS-route platform (like Vested):

1. You initiate a transfer in the app
2. You go to your bank and make an international SWIFT remittance under LRS
3. Your bank deducts TCS at source
4. Money arrives at a US broker-dealer typically in 2–5 days
5. You can now buy US stocks

On INDmoney's GIFT City route (post-August 2025):

1. You initiate a transfer in the app
2. You make a domestic bank transfer (IMPS/NEFT/UPI) to INDmoney's GIFT City account
3. No LRS declaration is required at your bank; no TCS is deducted
4. The GIFT City entity processes the transfer and makes it available for US stock purchases
5. You can now buy US stocks

The domestic transfer step is the key difference. Because you are sending money to a GIFT City entity within India's IFSC — not across a border — it is treated differently under the current regulatory framework.

FX conversion: Your rupees are converted to USD within the GIFT City infrastructure. INDmoney applies an FX markup as part of this conversion. The current rate should be verified directly with INDmoney, as FX markups can change and vary by transaction size.

No LRS cap consumption: Because the GIFT City route is not classified as an LRS remittance under the prevailing interpretation, it does not consume your $250,000 annual LRS limit. If you are also using LRS for other purposes — education fees, overseas travel, other foreign investments — this headroom matters.

The caveat, stated plainly: This framework is based on how GIFT City is designed and the IFSCA's regulatory intent. It is not yet backed by a specific RBI circular that says "GIFT City GAP transfers are excluded from LRS limits." Investors making large allocations — ₹20L or more in a financial year — should take a CA opinion on the current regulatory position before proceeding.

Opening an account

Account opening is fully digital. INDmoney uses standard Indian KYC requirements:

Documents needed:

• PAN card
• Aadhaar-linked mobile number (for OTP verification)
• Bank statement (last 3–6 months) or cancelled cheque
• Video KYC (short selfie video, as required by SEBI guidelines)

If you already use INDmoney for Indian investing: This is INDmoney's most significant onboarding advantage. If you have an existing INDmoney account for mutual funds, Indian equities, or FDs, adding US stock access is an extension within the same account. You do not open a new account or go through full KYC again. The US stocks feature becomes available as an additional module in the existing app.

If you are new to INDmoney: Expect 24–48 hours for full approval. The process is comparable to other Indian investing app onboarding flows — download the app, enter PAN, complete Aadhaar OTP, upload bank proof, complete video KYC, and wait for approval.

Buying US stocks

INDmoney covers NYSE and NASDAQ listed stocks and ETFs. The buying experience follows a standard flow:

1. Search for a stock by name or ticker in the app
2. Open the stock detail page
3. Tap "Buy"
4. Choose whole shares or a fractional amount
5. Enter amount in INR or USD
6. Select market or limit order
7. Confirm the order

Fractional shares: INDmoney supports fractional investing, which means you can buy a piece of an expensive stock — $10 of Nvidia, $50 of Amazon — without needing to purchase a full share. This makes diversification practical at smaller investment sizes.

US stock SIPs: INDmoney offers recurring investment instructions for US stocks — the equivalent of an SIP for the Indian mutual fund market. You can set up a weekly or monthly instruction to invest a fixed amount in a specific US stock or ETF. This is useful for investors who want to build a position systematically over time rather than timing the market with lump-sum investments.

Brokerage: 0.25% per trade, capped at $35 per order (approximately ₹3,000). There is no account opening fee and no annual maintenance fee. The cap means trades above $14,000 (~₹11.9L) pay a flat $35 regardless of size. At 0.25% up to that cap, INDmoney's brokerage is in the mid-market range — higher than Tickertape (0.15%) but the $35 ceiling makes large lump-sum buys relatively affordable.

The all-in-one portfolio view

This is where INDmoney's product design genuinely differentiates from single-purpose US investing platforms.

INDmoney consolidates across:

• Indian mutual funds (direct plans across all AMCs)
• Indian stocks (NSE and BSE listed equities)
• US stocks and ETFs
• Fixed deposits (across partner banks)
• Insurance (health and life policies linked to your profile)

Everything feeds into a single net-worth dashboard. Your total portfolio value — Indian equity, US equity, debt, FDs — is visible in one place, in INR.

Why this matters in practice: An investor with ₹30L in Indian mutual funds, ₹10L in Indian equities, and ₹15L in US stocks needs three apps to see her complete picture if she uses Zerodha for Indian stocks, a separate MF platform, and Vested for US stocks. On INDmoney, all three are in the same place, with a combined net-worth figure updated in real time during market hours.

For goal-based investing — retirement corpus, child's education, home purchase — this combined view is more useful than individual platform views. INDmoney's goal-tracking features work across all asset classes in the same interface, so a retirement goal can include both Indian and US stock holdings in the progress calculation.

For families managing multiple investment products across life stages, this consolidation has real practical value. The counterargument is that dedicated platforms (Zerodha for Indian equities, Vested for US stocks) may offer more depth in their respective categories. The right choice depends on whether breadth of view or depth of features matters more to you.

Tax reporting: lot-level ITR format

This is INDmoney's clearest functional differentiator in the US investing space.

When you sell US stocks, calculating your Indian capital gains requires lot-level tracking: for each lot you sell, you need the acquisition date, the cost basis in INR (at the exchange rate on the purchase date), the sale proceeds in INR (at the exchange rate on the sale date), and the resulting gain or loss — classified as STCG (held 24 months or less) or LTCG (held more than 24 months).

Doing this manually from a raw account statement is tedious and error-prone. INDmoney's tax reporting generates this data in a format that maps to the ITR capital gains schedule. For each taxable event:

• Acquisition date and sale date
• Cost in INR (converted at the exchange rate on acquisition date)
• Sale proceeds in INR (converted at the exchange rate on sale date)
• Net gain or loss in INR
• Classification: STCG or LTCG

This is CA-ready data. A tax professional can take INDmoney's tax report directly into the ITR filing without needing to reconstruct exchange rates or classify holding periods manually.

Compare this to Vested's tax tooling, which is stronger on the Schedule FA side (the foreign asset disclosure) but less granular on the capital gains side. Vested provides a Schedule FA pre-fill helper — useful for the FA section of ITR-2/3. INDmoney's strength is on the capital gains computation, where the lot-level INR reporting reduces the effort for investors with frequent US stock trades or large portfolios with many positions.

The capital gains rules are the same regardless of platform: STCG on US stocks is taxed at your income slab rate. LTCG on US stocks held more than 24 months is taxed at 12.5% with no indexation. The cost basis is always in INR at the exchange rate on the purchase date. What INDmoney does is make computing these numbers significantly easier.

Schedule FA and GIFT City: an evolving picture

Schedule FA is Part FA of the ITR-2 or ITR-3, where Indian residents disclose foreign financial assets — bank accounts, brokerage accounts, and other financial interests outside India. Historically, any Indian resident with US stock holdings through an LRS-route platform had a clear Schedule FA obligation: the DriveWealth or similar US broker account is a foreign financial account.

The GIFT City route complicates this in an interesting way. If your US stocks are technically held through an IFSC-regulated entity within India's GIFT City — rather than directly in a foreign brokerage account in the traditional sense — the nature of the "foreign asset" is less clear. GIFT City is physically in India and is a domestic IFSC. Whether holdings accessed through a GIFT City GAP licence constitute "foreign assets" for Schedule FA purposes is not yet the subject of explicit CBDT guidance as of mid-2026.

What this means practically:

• INDmoney does not currently offer a Schedule FA pre-fill helper for its GIFT City-routed US stock holdings (unlike Vested, which provides this for its LRS-route DriveWealth accounts)
• The reason is that the disclosure treatment itself is unsettled — INDmoney cannot pre-fill a form whose structure for GIFT City holdings is not yet clarified by tax authorities
• Until CBDT issues guidance specific to GIFT City GAP-accessed foreign securities, investors with meaningful US positions through INDmoney should consult a CA about how to handle (or whether to handle) the FA schedule

This is not necessarily a problem — if GIFT City holdings are eventually confirmed to not require Schedule FA disclosure, that would actually be an advantage. But the current state is ambiguity, and ambiguity in tax filing requires professional guidance.

What INDmoney does not do

INDmoney's breadth of product coverage comes with trade-offs in depth:

No US options or derivatives: INDmoney covers US stocks and ETFs only. If you want to trade options on US stocks, you need IBKR or a platform like Paasa that provides IBKR access.

No ACATS inbound transfers: If you hold US stocks at another broker — E*Trade RSUs, Schwab, Fidelity — you cannot move those holdings into INDmoney. The platform does not accept inbound ACATS transfers. RSU consolidation is Rovia's speciality.

No OTC markets: NYSE and NASDAQ listed securities only. No pink-sheet or OTC bulletin board stocks.

No Schedule FA pre-fill: As covered above, INDmoney does not currently provide a Schedule FA helper for its GIFT City holdings. Vested does this for its LRS-route accounts.

No integrated research depth: INDmoney's stock discovery and research tools are adequate but not the strongest in the market. Tickertape, which is built around a screener and research-first interface with execution bolted on, has more depth for investors who make decisions based on quantitative screening.

Brokerage not the cheapest: At 0.25% per trade (capped at $35), INDmoney is not the lowest-cost option. Tickertape charges 0.15% on the same GIFT City route. For regular investors the 10 basis-point difference adds up; though for very large single trades the $35 cap limits INDmoney's cost advantage over percentage-only pricing.

Who INDmoney is for

Investors who want everything in one app. If you already use INDmoney for Indian mutual funds or FDs, adding US stocks is the path of least resistance. You do not open a new account or learn a new interface. Your combined Indian and US portfolio is visible in one place.

Investors with multiple positions who want clean tax reporting. The lot-level ITR-format capital gains report is genuinely useful if you trade US stocks more than once or twice a year, or if you are building a multi-stock US portfolio where tracking cost bases manually becomes burdensome.

Goal-based investors managing across asset classes. The ability to track a retirement goal across Indian equity funds, Indian stocks, US stocks, and FDs in a single interface — with progress measured in INR — is a real workflow benefit for investors who think in terms of financial goals rather than individual accounts.

Existing INDmoney users who want to add US exposure without a second account. This is probably INDmoney's largest natural user base for US stocks: people who came for the Indian investing features and want to extend into US equities without switching platforms.

Who should look elsewhere

Need the cheapest brokerage on the GIFT City route: Tickertape charges 0.15% versus INDmoney's 0.25%. If you are making large or frequent trades, that 10 basis-point difference adds up. Both use the GIFT City IFSC route.

Need screeners and research integrated with execution: Tickertape's research tools — its stock screener, factor-based filters, and valuation overlays — are more developed than INDmoney's. If you make decisions based on systematic screening, Tickertape's interface is built around that workflow.

Need RSU consolidation: Rovia handles inbound ACATS transfers and RSU management. No Indian-facing platform other than Rovia has this.

Need US options: IBKR via Paasa or direct IBKR access is the only realistic option for Indian residents who want to trade options on US stocks.

Need the LRS route with Schedule FA pre-fill: If you specifically want LRS-route exposure (for reasons related to currency hedging, treaty planning, or because your CA prefers the LRS framework for its clarity), and you want a Schedule FA pre-fill helper built into the platform, Vested is the more developed option on those two dimensions.

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Vested.blog is the editorial publication of Rovia.