SEIS Scheme: What Service Exports from India Scheme Was and Its Status

The SEIS scheme, or Service Exports from India Scheme, was a government incentive that rewarded Indian service exporters with transferable duty credit scrips worth 3% to 7% of their net foreign exchange earnings. It ran under the Foreign Trade Policy 2015 to 2020 and was administered by the Directorate General of Foreign Trade (DGFT).

The important thing to know upfront: SEIS has been discontinued. Benefits stopped for exports made from 1 April 2020, so the last eligible year was 2019 to 2020, and the Foreign Trade Policy 2023 did not revive it.

If you are researching SEIS to claim it today, there is no live scheme to apply to, though the concept still shapes how service exporters think about incentives.

One quick disambiguation: in India, SEIS means the Service Exports from India Scheme. In the United Kingdom, "SEIS" refers to the Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme, an unrelated startup-investment tax relief. This guide covers the Indian export scheme.

SEIS was designed to make Indian service exports more competitive by giving exporters a reward they could convert into cash value. Instead of a direct subsidy, the government issued duty credit scrips, which are transferable certificates that can be used to pay certain central duties, or sold to another importer for cash. An exporter earned scrips as a percentage of net foreign exchange earned from notified services, and could then use or trade them. The scheme sat on the services side of India's export incentives, a different track from the goods schemes covered in export of services vs export of goods.

A worked example of the scrip value

A number shows why exporters valued the scheme. Suppose a consulting firm earned $5,00,000 of net foreign exchange from notified services in an eligible year, at a 5% SEIS rate.

The scrip value was 5% of $5,00,000, which is $25,000 worth of duty credit. The firm could use that scrip to pay certain central duties, or sell it to an importer who needed those credits, converting it to cash at a small discount.

On a thin-margin services contract, that 5% often landed straight on the bottom line, which is why the scheme mattered and why its removal was felt. The point of the example is historical, since no fresh scrip arises today.

Under the scheme, a service provider had to meet conditions that included:

• Supplying notified services from India to a recipient abroad, in the eligible modes of supply (broadly, cross-border supply and consumption abroad).
• Earning net foreign exchange above a minimum threshold in the year, with a lower threshold for individuals and sole proprietors than for other entities.
• Holding an active Import Export Code (IEC), confirmed through iec code verification, at the time of rendering the service.

Software and IT services, professional services, and several other categories featured on the notified list, which is why so many technology and services exporters engaged with the scheme while it was live. Claims were filed online with the DGFT, which needed a digital signature, covered in dsc for dgft.

The scheme lapsed with the Foreign Trade Policy 2015 to 2020, and benefits were not extended beyond the 2019 to 2020 financial year. The DGFT later confirmed that no SEIS entitlement would arise for exports made on or after 1 April 2020. Part of the rationale was that incentive schemes tied to export value can face challenge under global trade rules, and part was that India's services exports were growing strongly without a direct subsidy. Policy attention shifted toward digital trade infrastructure, simpler compliance and faster cross-border settlement rather than scrip-based rewards.

For goods, the RoDTEP scheme now refunds embedded duties and taxes, explained in rodtep scheme. For services, no equivalent scrip incentive has been notified in its place.

The export-incentive landscape changed as one scheme replaced another, so it helps to compare them side by side.

The pattern is clear: the scrip-based reward schemes for both goods (MEIS) and services (SEIS) were wound down, while goods exporters gained RoDTEP as a WTO-compliant successor. Services exporters did not receive an equivalent, which is why a service business today plans without a direct incentive rather than around one.

• 1 April 2015: SEIS launched under the Foreign Trade Policy 2015 to 2020, replacing the earlier Served From India Scheme.
• 2015 to 2020: Eligible service exporters earned duty credit scrips of 3% to 7% of net foreign exchange.
• 1 April 2020: Benefits stopped; no SEIS entitlement arises for exports from this date.
• Foreign Trade Policy 2023: The scheme is not revived, and no direct services successor is notified.

Knowing the timeline matters because a good deal of content still online describes SEIS in the present tense, which can mislead a founder into planning for a benefit that no longer exists.

With SEIS gone, the meaningful benefits for a services exporter are now on the tax and payments side, not a duty-scrip:

• Zero-rated GST on exports. Export of services is a zero-rated supply under GST, so you charge no GST and can claim input-tax refunds. The full treatment sits in export of services under gst.
• Other export incentives where applicable. A broader view of what remains is in export incentives.
• Efficient foreign-exchange realisation. Since every export benefit depends on bringing earnings into India as convertible foreign exchange with proper documentation, the cost and cleanliness of that step is now where real money is saved or lost.

That last point is where the shift in policy actually lands for an exporter. When there is no scrip topping up your margin, the rate you convert at and the speed you get paid carry more weight.

Xflow settles export receipts through AD-1 banks at the live mid-market rate (MMR) rather than a marked-up bank rate, with an automatic eFIRA for proof and next business day (T+1) settlement. As of February 2026 Xflow holds final Payment Aggregator Cross Border (PA-CB) authorisation from the RBI for both exports and imports. Services businesses can start from cross-border payments for service exporters or IT-enabled services.

The scheme worked off a notified list rather than covering every service. Broadly, the categories that qualified included:

• Professional services such as legal, accounting, architectural and engineering work.
• Computer and IT-related services, including software implementation and consultancy, where a software exporter also handled stpi software exports reporting.
• Research and development services.
• Hospitality, education and health-related services within the notified scope.

Two conditions sat behind the list. The service had to be supplied in an eligible mode, essentially cross-border supply or consumption abroad, and the exporter needed net foreign exchange above the minimum threshold. Because the list and rates were revised over the scheme's life, the applicable rate depended on the exact service and year, which is why exporters checked the notified schedule for each claim rather than assuming a flat figure.

This is the question that keeps the topic alive. In general, no fresh SEIS claim arises for exports made on or after 1 April 2020, and the windows to file for the earlier eligible years have closed. If your business believes it had an unclaimed entitlement from an eligible year, that is a matter for professional review of the specific facts, not a live application you can simply start now.

For planning purposes, it helps to treat SEIS as closed and to build your numbers on the benefits that still exist. That way a favourable review of an old year, if one applies, is a bonus rather than something your cash flow depends on.

The scheme is closed, yet search interest stays high, which is worth understanding. Many founders heard about SEIS from older blogs, or from peers who claimed it before 2020, so they look for it when they start exporting.

Others confuse it with active schemes, because the export-incentive landscape is crowded with acronyms. And some are simply checking whether a benefit exists that they can build into their pricing.

The honest answer serves them better than a hopeful one: SEIS provides no fresh benefit today, so a services exporter needs to plan around the levers that still work rather than one that has lapsed.

Losing a 3% to 7% top-up matters, so it helps to see what moved into its place, even though nothing directly replaced it.

The policy focus shifted from paying exporters a scrip to lowering the friction of exporting. That shift shows up as zero-rated GST that offers full input-credit recovery, simpler online compliance, cleaner realisation proof through a firc for gst refund, and faster, cheaper cross-border settlement. None of these is a cash reward, while together they support a lower effective cost of exporting.

For a services business, the practical response is to treat efficient payments as the new margin lever. When there is no scrip topping up a thin contract, the rate you convert at and the speed you are paid provide the saving that SEIS once did.

A short set of questions helps you focus on what still works:

• Are you charging 0% GST on genuine exports and claiming the input-credit refund you are owed?
• Do you have clean foreign inward remittance proof for every export invoice?
• Are you converting near the mid-market rate, or losing margin to a hidden spread?
• Do you review your payment costs the way you once tracked incentive scrips?

Answering these provides more value today than searching for a scheme that no longer issues scrips, because the savings they surface are real and current.

It also helps to compare your effective cost of exporting now against what it was under SEIS. The scrip once added 3% to 7% to a services deal, while today an efficient, transparent payment setup offers a comparable saving through a better conversion rate and faster settlement. That comparison usually shows the margin is still there to protect, just in a different place.

So the productive response to a discontinued scheme is not to wait for its return, but to capture the saving that an efficient payment flow now offers. In other words, the incentive changed shape rather than vanished, and the exporters who do best are the ones who track their payment costs as closely as they once tracked their scrip entitlement.

The SEIS scheme rewarded Indian service exporters with 3% to 7% duty credit scrips under the 2015 to 2020 Foreign Trade Policy, but it was discontinued for exports from 1 April 2020 and has no direct successor for services. Do not build a cash-flow plan around it. Instead, lean on zero-rated GST on your exports and on efficient, well-documented foreign-exchange realisation, which is where the value for a services exporter now sits.

This guide is general information, not tax or trade-policy advice. Confirm any current entitlement with the DGFT or a qualified professional.