How to approach your bank regarding AdSense wire transfer

Receiving the AdSense payments through wire transfer (and any other wire transfers) to a bank account in India involves some manual process at the bank. Google makes the wire transfer on 21st or 22nd of every month. Then it goes through some intermediary banks and finally reaches the foreign currency transaction department of your bank, which will be different from your local branch. The people sitting at the foreign currency department will look at the awaiting wire transfers everyday, look at the payee name, compare with your account etc. If everything is matching, they will click the button to accept the wire transfer. While accepting the wire transfer and crediting the amount to your account, the bank person has to enter some information regarding the source and purpose of the foreign currency received. This is a mandatory RBI rule.

Sometimes, the bank will assume some purpose and accept the wire transfer. But in many other cases, the foreign currency department will call or email the local branch asking them to find out the purpose from the account owner. Then your local branch is supposed to call you and find out the purpose of the transaction.

This is were most AdSense publishers get into trouble. Many times, the bank may fail to reach the account owner for various reasons like wrong phone number in records, no phone number available, people not picking up calls, local branch people are not efficient to find out the information etc.

If you are expecting a wire transfer payment from Google or any foreign payer, it is a good idea to approach your bank while the payment is pending and provide certain information.

The information that your bank requires to accept your wire transfer is the purpose of the transaction. Reserve Bank of India has issued a list of purpose codes that describes different types of transactions.

You may want to submit a letter to your bank explaining the purpose of the wire transfer. Here is a sample letter which you can customize, print and submit to the bank: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1W4Qlu0M9BsMZEiPSQGsbZsFvONcsH9F_69JqDOlp49M/edit

The purpose code for advertising income from Google AdSense is P1007, which represents few online services. You can read more about the purpose code for AdSense income.

If you do not receive the expected wire transfer after 10 working days from the date of issue of payment, you can request reissue of wire transfer payment.

If you are making good revenue from your blogs, you can read some tax saving tips for Indian bloggers.