FIRC, FIRA or eBRC. Which one does DGFT or my bank want?

Who is asking, and what will they accept?

Start here, not with the name of the document. Exporters lose weeks chasing a named document because the person who named it was using a habit rather than a requirement. The four parties who ask want four different things, and only one of them wants a document a bank issues.

What are these four documents, exactly?

The confusion is not carelessness. Three of the four names contain the same two ideas (inward remittance and a certificate) and the fourth is an abbreviation of a phrase nobody says out loud. Set out plainly:

• FIRA. Foreign Inward Remittance Advice. A proof-of-credit advice issued by a bank or a payment platform. It reports that a foreign currency credit reached you. This is the document most e-commerce exporters actually hold.
• FIRC. Foreign Inward Remittance Certificate. The formal certificate, historically issued on pre-printed security stationery. It certifies the credit rather than merely reporting it. Banks generally no longer issue a physical FIRC for ordinary export receipts, which is why asking for one produces a refusal rather than a document.
• eBRC. Electronic Bank Realisation Certificate. A DGFT-portal record that a shipping bill has been realised. It is the document the foreign trade schemes run on. Despite "Bank" sitting in the middle of its name, your bank does not issue it.
• Bank advice, credit advice, SWIFT copy. The ordinary transaction paperwork around a single credit. Useful as commercial evidence and as a tracing aid when a payment has gone astray. It carries no standing with DGFT.

For the mechanics of the bank-side documents (which banks and which platforms issue which, how to download each, and what they charge) that ground is covered in full in the FIRA download guide and is not restated here. This page is about picking the right one.

Why will my bank not issue the eBRC?

Because it is not the bank's document any more. DGFT Trade Notice 33/2023-24 moved the eBRC to exporter self-certification: you generate it on the DGFT portal by mapping the Inward Remittance Messages your bank has reported against your shipping bills. The bank's role is to report the IRM. The certificate is then yours to raise.

This matters operationally more than it sounds, because it changes who you escalate to. An exporter who believes the eBRC is a bank product spends the wait writing to a trade-services desk that has nothing to issue. The correct split is:

• Ask the bank whether the IRM has been created and mapped to the right shipping bill. That is the bank's job and the bank can fix it.
• Ask DGFT nothing until the IRM exists. There is nothing on the portal to grieve about while the upstream record is missing.
• Generate it yourself once the IRM is there. No one is going to do it for you, and an unraised eBRC is indistinguishable, from the outside, from an unrealised export.

The full filing sequence, including what to do when the mapping is wrong rather than missing, is in the eBRC filing guide .

Why is there no eBRC when the money has arrived?

Because the money arriving and the money being reported are two separate events , and only the second one produces an eBRC. The credit can be sitting in your account, fully converted, while EDPMS holds nothing against that shipping bill. In order of how often it actually happens:

Every row above is a bank-side record problem, which is the point: a missing eBRC is almost never a DGFT problem. The two rows that most often masquerade as something else are covered separately. one payout against many shipping bills and an IRM the bank says is over-utilised . For changing a purpose code after the fact, see the purpose code change guide .

Is a gateway's advice the same as a bank's FIRA?

For the purpose of showing a counterparty that money reached you, broadly yes. For the purpose of closing an export bill, the question to ask is narrower and more useful: did this credit reach you through an Authorised Dealer bank, and was it reported as an export receipt? A platform document that answers yes to both is doing the work. One that does not is a receipt, however official it looks.

This is where e-commerce exporters diverge from B2B exporters sharply. A marketplace or gateway settlement arrives net of fees, often batched across many orders, and sometimes through an intermediary that is not your AD bank. Each platform handles the paperwork differently, and the differences decide whether you can close a bill at all. Those are compared platform by platform in the provider-by-provider FIRA comparison , with the two hardest cases written up on their own: Stripe and PayPal .

What do I send when the asker named a document I cannot get?

This is the ordinary case, not the exception. Requests in this area are copied forward through checklists for years after the document they name has changed hands or stopped being issued. Work it in this order:

• Ask what the request is trying to establish. Almost always: that a specific foreign payment reached you against a specific invoice or shipping bill. That is a question about proof, not about stationery.
• Send what establishes it. The bank or platform remittance advice, plus the EDPMS or eBRC position for the bill. Together these cover what a FIRC was ever used to show.
• Say so in writing. Name the document you are sending, state what it proves, and state which named document it stands in place of. An unlabelled substitute gets returned; a labelled one usually does not.
• Escalate to the policy owner, not to your bank. If the party insists on the named document itself rather than the proof behind it, that is their internal policy to change. Your bank cannot issue its way out of it.

Where the requester is your own AD bank and the bill is already overdue, the request is usually a different one wearing the same words. The bank wants a written explanation and a document pack, not a certificate. That pack is set out in the guide to answering a pending-realisation letter .

Which document proves what?

The summary table. Read the third column first. It is the one that decides whether the document in your hand is the document the situation needs.

Which figures does this guide not state, and where are they?

This page deliberately states no rate, threshold, deadline or fee. It is a routing guide, and a routing guide that guesses at numbers is worse than one that sends you to the page carrying the citation. Four things it declines to state:

• The date and instrument that ended physical FIRCs for export receipts. Widely reported, not sourced to a primary document here, and so not stated. The page says only that banks generally no longer issue one. Which is the part that changes what you do.
• What each bank and platform charges for a FIRA or FIRC, and how long it takes. Bank by bank and platform by platform in the FIRA download guide .
• The realisation period your shipping bill is running against. It depends on when you shipped, and it changes for exports on or after 1 October 2026. See when the clock actually starts .
• Which document a GST refund claim requires. A separate regime with its own rules and its own evidence, and it differs between goods and services. See GST on export of services .

Questions exporters ask about these four documents

Can I ask my bank for an eBRC?

No, and this is the single most common wasted fortnight in this area. Under DGFT Trade Notice 33/2023-24 the exporter self-certifies the eBRC on the DGFT portal by mapping bank-reported Inward Remittance Messages to shipping bills. The bank no longer issues the certificate. A bank that says it cannot give you an eBRC is not obstructing you and is not behind on its work. It is describing the system correctly. What the bank does is report the Inward Remittance Message into EDPMS, and that report is what makes the eBRC available for you to generate.

My money has arrived. Why is there still no eBRC to generate?

Because the money arriving and the money being reported are two different events, and the eBRC depends on the second. No eBRC exists until your AD bank has reported the Inward Remittance Message against your shipping bill in EDPMS. The credit can be sitting in your account while the IRM has not been created, has been created against the wrong shipping bill, or has been consumed by an earlier batch. The block is upstream at the bank, not on the DGFT portal, so raising a DGFT grievance about a missing eBRC usually returns you to the bank you should have started with.

Is a FIRA the same thing as a FIRC?

No. A FIRA is a Foreign Inward Remittance Advice. A proof-of-credit advice issued by a bank or a payment platform showing that a foreign currency credit reached you. A FIRC is a Foreign Inward Remittance Certificate, the formal certificate historically issued on pre-printed security stationery. They are routinely used as if they were the same document, and they are not: the advice reports a credit, the certificate certifies it. For the mechanics of each, and which banks and platforms issue which, see the FIRA download guide.

My buyer's bank sent me a SWIFT copy. Is that enough?

It depends entirely on who is asking, and usually not. A SWIFT message or a remitting-bank advice evidences that a payment was sent. It does not evidence that the money was received in your account in India, converted, and reported by your Authorised Dealer bank. Every Indian-side requirement in this area turns on the receiving side, not the sending side. A SWIFT copy is useful to your bank as a tracing aid when a credit has not landed, and it is useful to you as commercial evidence in a dispute with a buyer. It is not a substitute for the document your AD bank issues.

The party asking has named a document that does not exist any more. What do I send?

Ask them what they are trying to establish, and send the document that establishes it. Most requests for a FIRC are really requests to prove that a specific foreign payment reached you against a specific invoice or shipping bill, and the bank's remittance advice plus the EDPMS or eBRC position establishes that. Say in writing which document you are sending, what it proves, and which named document it stands in place of. A request that is genuinely for the retired document (rather than for the proof behind it) needs to go back to the party's own policy owner, not to your bank.

Does the eBRC value matter, or only the fact that it exists?

The value matters and it is frequently smaller than exporters expect. RoDTEP and duty drawback are calculated on the eBRC value rather than the shipping bill FOB value, so marketplace and gateway fee deductions shrink the incentive actually received. This is one of the reasons the eBRC is not a formality to be generated and forgotten: the number it carries is the number your scheme claim is computed on. Partial realisation is permitted and the eBRC is issued for the amount actually received.

Update history

• 2026-09-18 First published.