Airport cash rules: How much money can you legally carry?
3 min readNew DelhiJul 9, 2026 03:59 PM IST Carrying too much currency, whether it is local cash or foreign banknotes, is one of the fastest ways to be detained, questioned, and have your funds seized at an airport, says aviation expert K Anuradha Suresh, a retired Senior AGM at Air India. She noted that people often think, ‘It’s my hard-earned money, why can’t I carry it?’ but from an aviation security and global banking perspective, “airports act as frontline checkpoints for anti-money laundering (AML) and counter-terrorist financing (CTF) regulations”....