How to encash duty credit scrips: from ledger balance to money in the bank

An exporter who has claimed RoDTEP or RoSCTL correctly ends up with value sitting in a ledger, not in a bank account. The credit arrives as an e-scrip in the Electronic Duty Credit Ledger on ICEGATE, and it stays there, paying nothing, until you act. "Encashing" is the trade name for the act: turning that ledger entry into money you can actually spend. There are only two ways to do it, and this playbook covers both, with most of its weight on the one that involves a sale.

Encashing means choosing one of two exits

Every scrip has exactly two exits. The first: use it yourself, against basic customs duty on your own imports, at full face value. The second: transfer it to someone who will, and take cash at a discount. There is no third route. The government does not buy scrips back, and the credit never converts to a bank deposit on its own.

The choice between the exits is a single question: can your own import pipeline absorb the face value before the scrip expires? An e-scrip pays basic customs duty only, never IGST, SWS or cess, so the relevant pipeline is your BCD bill specifically, not your total customs outgo. What duties a scrip can pay works through this in detail. Validity is two years from creation in the ledger, so the arithmetic is concrete: if your BCD over the remaining life of the scrip comfortably exceeds its face value, self-use wins, because it captures 100 paise on the rupee. If it does not, sell, and sell early, because every idle month is validity a buyer would have paid for.

The cash journey, stage by stage

The sale route has five stages, and understanding them is most of understanding the timeline.

• Scrip in the ledger. The credit exists as an e-scrip in your Electronic Duty Credit Ledger on ICEGATE, governed by the Electronic Duty Credit Ledger Regulations, 2021. You can verify the balance yourself before doing anything else.
• Listing. You put the scrip in front of buyers. Where you do this determines everything downstream, and selling RoDTEP scrips online compares the routes. On Scriphouse a firm quote is held for sixty seconds: a number you can accept, not an indication that gets renegotiated later.
• Price agreement. The price is fixed before anything moves. This ordering matters more than it sounds: the failure mode in informal deals is a price that softens after the scrip has already been transferred.
• Transfer on ICEGATE. The transfer is a two-sided handshake on the portal: you initiate, and the transferee approves on their side before the credit moves. The mechanics are in how to transfer a duty credit scrip on ICEGATE. There is no limit on how many times a scrip can be transferred.
• Settlement to bank. The buyer's money reaches your account. On Scriphouse the exchange settles delivery versus payment, so the transfer and the payout are one event, and you get a UTR the same day.

One boundary to note: this journey describes ICEGATE e-scrips, which is what RoDTEP and RoSCTL issue. Legacy MEIS and SEIS scrips are DGFT-issued instruments and move through DGFT records instead; the legacy scrip guide covers those.

What you will realise: the discount and what moves it

You will not get face value in a sale, and it is worth being precise about why. The buyer of a scrip is an importer who must consume it against their own basic customs duty before it expires. They are taking on your absorption problem, and the discount is the price of that transfer of risk. Three things move it for any given scrip:

• Remaining validity. The dominant driver. A scrip with eighteen months of life is easy for a buyer to consume at leisure. A scrip with six weeks left is a race, and it is priced like one.
• Size. Each transfer is its own operation, so a single large scrip is cheaper for a buyer to absorb than the same value scattered across many small ones.
• Scheme. RoDTEP, RoSCTL and legacy instruments trade differently because the buyer pools differ, and a buyer will only bid on paper they are set up to consume.

There is no published schedule of discounts, and any page that quotes one is averaging across all of these, which is exactly where a holder loses money. How duty credit scrips are priced goes deeper, and the scrip value calculator will give you a working estimate for your own paper.

Timelines: same day against T+3 to T+7

The stage where routes diverge is settlement. On an exchange the transfer and the payment are atomic: delivery versus payment, so neither side is ever exposed, and the payout lands at T+0 with a UTR you can hand to your accountant. Same-day T+0 settlement explains how the money and the scrip move together.

Broker-intermediated deals commonly run T+3 to T+7, and the stalls cluster at predictable points: the end buyer's approval of the ICEGATE transfer waits on someone finding time to log in, the payment waits on the buyer confirming the credit has landed in their ledger, and in the worst structures the payment waits until the buyer has actually utilised the scrip against a bill of entry. Each wait is a window in which you have parted with the scrip and do not yet have the money. The transfer itself is quick on all routes; the days are spent in the gaps between price, transfer and payment that a delivery-versus-payment settlement closes by design.

Worked example: a Rs 10 lakh scrip, gross to net

Take a RoDTEP e-scrip with a face value of Rs 10,00,000 and comfortable remaining validity, and suppose the price you agree is 97 paise per rupee of face value. That figure is an illustration, not a quote: your scrip's scheme, size and validity set your actual price.

• Gross consideration: Rs 10,00,000 at 0.97 = Rs 9,70,000.
• Platform fee: 0.40% of the value that settles = Rs 3,880 on the sell side.
• GST on the fee: 18% of Rs 3,880 = Rs 698.40. The fee attracts GST; the scrip sale itself does not, as the next section explains.
• Net realisation: Rs 9,70,000 minus Rs 4,578.40 = Rs 9,65,421.60 in the bank, same day, with a UTR.

If this is the first trade on your IEC, the fee is nil on both sides, and the net is the full Rs 9,70,000. Every trade ships with a net-realisation statement showing exactly this arithmetic for your numbers, so nothing above is taken on trust.

Paperwork of the sale

The sale of a duty credit scrip is an exempt supply for GST: HSN 4907, S. No. 137 of Notification 10/2025-Central Tax (Rate), effective 22-09-2025. You raise your invoice for the scrip as an exempt supply and charge no GST on it; the 18% in the example above applies only to the platform fee, which is a taxable service. Exempt turnover has knock-on effects in your returns, and how to book a scrip sale in your accounts covers the entries.

Keep four documents against each sale: the transfer record from ICEGATE, your invoice, the net-realisation statement, and the bank credit with its UTR. How the discount sits in your profit and loss is a question for your CA with those papers in front of them. On Scriphouse the trade ledger exports as CSV or Tally-ready vouchers, so the handover to your accountant is a file, not a reconstruction.

When not to encash

Do not sell a scrip your own imports can absorb. Self-use captures face value; a sale captures face value minus the discount minus the fee, and no settlement speed changes that arithmetic. If your BCD pipeline over the scrip's remaining life exceeds its face value with room to spare, use it yourself and read how importers save with duty credit scrips instead of this page.

The honest caveat runs the other way more often than exporters expect. Because an e-scrip pays basic customs duty only, an import bill that looks large can hide a thin BCD component once IGST and cess are stripped out. Exporters who import little, or import mostly IGST-weighted goods, hold paper they cannot realistically consume, and for them holding is not prudence, it is decay: the discount deepens as validity burns. RoDTEP is notified to 30 September 2026 by DGFT Notification 74/2025-26, and if no continuation is notified the scheme lapses when the notified period ends; that affects future accrual, not the two-year validity of scrips already in your ledger, but it is one more reason to run the absorption arithmetic now rather than later.

Frequently asked questions

How do I convert my RoDTEP scrip into cash?

Sell it to a buyer who can use it against basic customs duty. The journey is: verify the e-scrip in your Electronic Duty Credit Ledger on ICEGATE, agree a price with a buyer or an exchange, initiate the transfer on ICEGATE, the buyer approves it on their side, and the payment settles to your bank. On an exchange with delivery-versus-payment settlement, the price is fixed first and the transfer and payout complete the same day.

How long does it take to encash a duty credit scrip?

On an exchange, the same day: the ICEGATE transfer and the bank payout are a single delivery-versus-payment event, so money lands at T+0 with a UTR. Broker-intermediated deals commonly take T+3 to T+7, because the buyer's transfer approval, ledger confirmation and payment happen as separate steps with waits between them.

How much money will I get for a Rs 10 lakh scrip?

The agreed price minus fees. There is no published discount schedule: the price depends on the scrip's remaining validity, its size and its scheme. As an illustration, at 97 paise per rupee a Rs 10,00,000 scrip fetches Rs 9,70,000 gross; a 0.40% sell-side fee of Rs 3,880 plus 18% GST on that fee leaves about Rs 9,65,422 net. On a first trade on an IEC the fee is nil and the net is the full gross.

Does the RoDTEP amount come directly to my bank account?

No. RoDTEP arrives as a duty credit in your Electronic Duty Credit Ledger on ICEGATE, not as a bank remittance. It becomes money in your account only through one of two exits: using it against basic customs duty on your own imports, or transferring it to a buyer who pays you for it.

Can I encash a scrip that is close to expiry?

Usually yes, but at a deepening discount, because the buyer must consume the scrip against their own imports before it expires and a short runway is priced as a risk. Validity is two years from creation in the ledger, remaining life is the dominant pricing driver, and a scrip that actually lapses is worth nothing, so the earlier you sell paper you cannot use, the more of its face value you keep.