Global payments
Posted on Feb 3, 2026
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Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman presented the Union Budget 2026–27 with a very clear message. India wants to move closer to the idea of “Viksit Bharat” or a developed India, with more public investment, stronger support for manufacturing and exports, and a push towards simpler, tech-enabled tax compliance.
On paper, the numbers look impressive.
Capital expenditure is up to about ₹12.2 lakh crore, and the fiscal deficit is pegged at 4.3 per cent of GDP, which signals that the government wants to keep building roads, ports and digital rails without completely ignoring fiscal discipline.
But if you are a freelancer, agency founder, SaaS builder, or exporter, you must consider these three things.
How will this Budget change your cash flow?
Will it make your costs and margins better or worse?
And will it make compliance easier or harder?
In this blog, we break down Budget 2026 through that lens.
Sector by sector, we look at what actually changed for freelancers and creators, digital service exporters, goods exporters, MSMEs and anyone who receives or spends money across borders.
The orange economy for freelancers and creators:
For freelancers and independent creators, one of the most important shifts in this Budget is the formal recognition of the Orange Economy, which covers animation, visual effects, gaming, comics and other digital creative services.
The government is no longer treating this as side income. It explicitly acknowledges creative work as a serious services-led industry and proposes AVGC content creator labs across colleges to build local talent and intellectual property.
You can read this as the state moving from simply tolerating creative work to actively planning around it.
In practical terms, the Budget is signalling that:
Creative services are a priority export area.
Skills in AVGC and related fields will be developed in an organised way.
Intellectual property created in India is something worth backing.
This recognition goes beyond symbolism. When design, video, games and content for global clients start appearing in official data and policy thinking, the ecosystem around them begins to mature.
Banks, NBFCs, and fintechs can work with clearer sector benchmarks, which, over time, improve how they evaluate platform payouts and project-based income.
For freelancers, the impact will build gradually.
It can mean better access to credit, more tailored financial products and smoother acceptance of foreign currency receipts as stable income.
Combined with India’s push to export more digital services, this Budget nudges creative professionals closer to being treated as mainstream entrepreneurs rather than informal earners.
Digital Service Exporters, Agencies & SaaS Businesses:
For digital service exporters like agencies, consulting firms, SaaS products, and remote-first teams, the Budget reinforces an existing direction with more digital infrastructure, deeper capital markets and a cleaner tax framework.
The announcement of a new Income Tax Act 2025, coming into force from 1 April 2026, is particularly relevant.
The stated intent is to simplify provisions, rationalise overlapping rules and roll out technology-friendly return forms that ordinary taxpayers and small businesses can actually understand and use.
For founders and finance teams, this means that cross-border invoices, foreign assets and overseas investments should, in theory, become easier to disclose and track inside a single coherent law.
Instead of dealing with a patchwork of legacy clauses and interpretations, businesses can expect clearer categories, more structured forms and fewer grey areas.
Combined with ongoing investments in data centres and digital public infrastructure, the environment for building and scaling export-oriented SaaS or service businesses should become more predictable, even if the underlying tax rates don’t change overnight.
Exporters in textiles, leather, marine and electronics:
For goods exporters, Budget 2026 is primarily about lowering input costs and strengthening supply chains in key sectors.
In textiles and leather, the Budget proposes relief on customs duties for selected textile inputs and a concessional treatment for “Wet Blue” leather, a semi-processed raw material widely used by the leather industry.
This is intended to reduce the cost of producing finished apparel and leather goods in India, making exporters more competitive in global markets where margins are tight and buyers are price-sensitive.Marine exporters also see a targeted benefit.
The duty-free import limit for certain seafood processing inputs, such as shrimp feed and additives, has been increased from 1% to 3% of the FOB value of exports.
This gives processors and exporters extra room to manage input costs without eroding already narrow profit margins.On the electronics side, an increased outlay of ₹40,000 crore for the Electronics Components Manufacturing Scheme and continued support for semiconductor ecosystems are designed to reduce dependence on imported components and strengthen the domestic supply chain.
These measures are expected to give Indian exporters more room to price aggressively, withstand global shocks in freight and input prices, and justify capacity expansion with a multi-year view.
MSMEs & Small Manufacturers:
For MSMEs and small manufacturing units, access to capital has always been the bottleneck.
Budget 2026 directly addresses this by proposing a ₹10,000 crore SME Growth Fund to provide equity support to “future MSME champions” and by allocating an additional ₹2,000 crore to the Self-Reliant India Fund to deepen risk capital available to micro and small enterprises.
Equity capital is particularly important because it strengthens balance sheets, making it easier for firms to qualify for bank credit, trade finance and structured products on more favourable terms than unsecured loans.
Alongside funding, the Budget emphasises physical and regulatory infrastructure through “plug-and-play” industrial parks, chemical parks and the revival or upgrading of industrial clusters.
For a small business, this reduces the need to individually solve for land, power, basic compliance and environmental clearances before production can start.
The expected impact is that more MSMEs will be able to move beyond survival mode and invest in better machinery, taking on larger export orders and signing longer-term contracts because both their financing options and operating environment have improved.
TCS for Entrepreneurs and Freelancers:
For entrepreneurs, freelancers and families who spend money abroad on business travel, overseas education or medical treatment, the rationalisation of Tax Collected at Source (TCS) on certain outward remittances is among the most visible changes.
The TCS rate on overseas tour packages has been sharply cut to 2%, down from an earlier structure of 5 to 20%, and this 2% applies without any minimum threshold.
In addition, TCS on foreign remittances for education and medical treatment under the Liberalised Remittance Scheme (LRS) has been reduced from 5% to 2%.
The 20% TCS on other LRS categories, such as some investment or general transfers, remains unchanged.
The expected impact is primarily on cash flow.
For founders and freelancers who regularly travel for conferences, client meetings, higher education or treatment, a 2% TCS rate means less money locked up upfront as tax in the month of spending.
It makes budgeting for legitimate foreign expenses more predictable and reduces the need to over-provision short-term working capital when multiple high-ticket payments cluster together.
However, it also increases the importance of correctly classifying each remittance, because mistagging a transaction into a higher-TCS category could still create avoidable cash flow friction and year-end reconciliation headaches.
Logistics, Trade Facilitation and Compliance:
Beyond sector-specific duty cuts, the Budget also works on the environment in which exports and trade operate.
Higher capital spending on roads, rail, ports, and inland waterways is expected to reduce logistics costs and make delivery timelines more reliable for exporters.
You can think of this push in three quick buckets:
Physical infrastructure that makes it cheaper and more reliable to move goods
Process improvements that make it faster and simpler to clear goods
New economic clusters that create fresh demand for digital payments
On the process side, the focus is on smoother customs procedures, more rational indirect taxes, and better facilities at ports and borders.
For small and mid-sized exporters, this should gradually make it easier to ship smaller consignments more often, experiment in new markets and manage compliance without drowning in paperwork.
Importantly, better logistics also means more organised money movement.
Coastal cargo routes, ship repair hubs and inland waterway ecosystems rely on dense vendor networks, from maintenance crews to fuel suppliers and local contractors.
As these ecosystems formalise, they will shift from paper-heavy invoicing to digital rails for high-frequency business payments.
For fintechs and platforms, that is a direct opportunity to power fast, transparent B2B payments and clean reconciliation for these new export-focused clusters.
Capital Markets & Funding Environment for Growth:
The financial sector and capital markets provide the backdrop against which all of these businesses raise money and manage risk.
Keeping the fiscal deficit glide path broadly on track while still raising capital expenditure, the Budget aims to reassure investors about macro-stability.
At the same time, tweaks to the taxation of buybacks, the treatment of minimum alternate tax (MAT) and the securities transaction tax (STT) on futures and options are intended to discourage purely speculative trading while simplifying the life of long-term investors and companies that use markets to raise genuine growth capital.
For export-oriented companies and fast-growing MSMEs, a healthier, more stable capital market can translate into more options beyond traditional bank loans, such as venture capital, private equity, venture debt, listed debt products and structured financing.
When combined with the SME Growth Fund and risk-capital pools described earlier, this creates a more diverse funding ladder for businesses that want to invest aggressively in capacity, technology, or global market entry without becoming over-leveraged.
Fintech and International Payments:
Although Budget 2026 does not announce a new cross-border payments scheme by name, its direction is clear.
The government wants more formal, digital, data-rich international flows that are easy to track and tax, without unnecessarily choking genuine business, education and medical transactions.
TCS rationalisation on certain outward remittances, strong support for export-linked manufacturing, and a forthcoming, more digital-friendly Income Tax Act all point towards a regime where legitimate global flows find it easier to move through regulated channels, while opaque or speculative flows face tighter scrutiny.
For international payments platforms like Infinity that help freelancers, agencies, and exporters receive more income in USD, EUR, GBP, and other 50+ currencies.
Businesses must look for rails that combine transparent FX pricing, faster INR settlement, and automated compliance for FIRA or FIRC, which help with tax documentation.
Infinity is built exactly for this, helping Indian businesses receive global payments quickly and compliantly while keeping FX costs and paperwork under control.
Platforms that can provide end-to-end visibility from invoice to payout to filing will fit naturally into the policy direction the Budget sketches out, with global ambitions, digital rails, and cleaner data for regulators.
Conclusion: Expected Impact for Global-Facing Indian Businesses
Budget 2026 is less about a big-bang reform and more about steady tailwinds for people already doing global work from India.
Freelancers and creators get formal recognition, digital service exporters and SaaS teams get a cleaner tax framework, goods exporters and MSMEs see better cost and funding support, and anyone spending abroad on tours, education or medical needs benefits from lower TCS and smoother cash flow.
The common thread is clear.
India wants more formal, digital, well-documented money flows, not less. That means the businesses that keep clean trails, price smartly, and use the right payment rails will benefit the most over the next few years.
This is exactly where Infinity comes in.
Infinity helps freelancers, agencies, and exporters receive global payments in USD, EUR, GBP and other 50+ currencies with transparent FX, faster one-day INR settlement and built-in compliance with automated FIRA.
It turns international earnings from a messy, high-friction process into a simple, predictable part of running your business.
If you are planning to grow your international income, now is a good time to upgrade your cross-border setup.
Open your account with Infinity and start receiving global payments the way this new policy environment expects you to work.
Sign up today!
Frequently Asked Questions
Does Budget 2026 change how foreign income is taxed as a freelancer or agency?
No, foreign income is still taxed as business or professional income, but the new Income Tax Act 2025 aims to simplify filing and reporting.
Has the tax on share buybacks changed for startup founders?
Yes, buybacks will now be taxed as capital gains in your hands instead of as a deemed dividend, closing the earlier arbitrage.
When will the New Income Tax Act 2025 come into effect?
It is planned to take effect from 1 April 2026.
Do I need to change how I receive international payments after this Budget?
You don’t have to, but shifting to a digital platform with transparent FX, proper FIRA or FIRC, and documentation will better align you with the new compliance direction.
