Last updated 06 August 2026
A bank's daily forex rate sheet looks forbidding: a grid of eight or ten numbers per currency, with abbreviated headings and no explanation. It is actually simple once you know the three questions it answers. This is how to read one in about a minute.
Every sheet is stamped with the date and usually the time it was struck. Check it first, because sheets go stale in ways that are not obvious:
Indian sheets are almost always dated day-first: 04-08-2026 is 4 August, not 8 April. If a comparison site shows you a date, check which convention it used.
This is the trap that catches people, and it is easy to be out by a factor of a hundred.
Rates are quoted in rupees per one unit of foreign currency — except for currencies whose unit is small, which are conventionally quoted per 100. The Japanese yen is the common case: most Indian banks quote it per 100 yen, so a figure near 60 means ₹0.60 per yen. Thai baht and Korean won are often quoted per 100 too, and the Indonesian rupiah sometimes per 10,000.
The convention is not universal. Of the seven banks tracked here, six quote the yen per 100 and one quotes it per single unit. Read literally, that makes the odd one out appear a hundred times better. Look for a heading like "INR / 100 JPY", or a note saying which currencies are quoted per 100 units — most sheets state it somewhere, and where they do, believe the sheet rather than your assumption.
Columns come in buy/sell pairs, and the naming is from the bank's perspective, not yours:
Watch the column order. It is not standardised: two of the seven banks tracked here print their selling rates before their buying rates, while the rest do the opposite. Read the headings rather than assuming position, or you will invert every figure. There is a fuller breakdown in TT Buying vs TT Selling vs Bill Rates.
Some sheets state the transaction size they apply to, in small print at the top, and it changes the answer completely. One major bank's sheet covers transactions between roughly ten and twenty lakh rupees and calls the figures reference rates, directing smaller amounts to a branch. Others state a ceiling — up to twenty or twenty-five lakh — which still includes ordinary retail amounts. If a bank's spread looks impossibly tight, check whether you are reading a wholesale quote.
A sheet on its own tells you what one bank charges but not whether it is good. For that you need the official mid-market rate — the Reserve Bank of India publishes a same-day reference rate for major currencies, and the European Central Bank publishes daily rates covering many more.
Compare the bank's selling rate with the reference and the gap is the margin you are paying. On a normal day, Indian banks range from a few hundredths of a percent to well over one percent on the same currency. The reference rates page does this calculation for all seven banks at once, and the comparison table puts the sheets side by side.
Finally, remember that every bank labels its own sheet indicative. The rate applied is the one prevailing when your account is actually debited or credited, and the rate is only part of the cost — see fees, GST and TCS.