New Platform Aims to Make Sending Remittances Home as Simple as Sending a WhatsApp for UAE’s Expat Workers
Wizz Financial to help the unbanked access credit and other financial services
A new financial platform aims to offer foreign workers in the United Arab Emirates, who often don’t have bank accounts, the ability to conduct transactions and send money to their homelands is a process as simple as sending a WhatsApp message.
Wizz Financial, a global fintech company specializing in cross-border payments, will be collaborating with NPCI International Payments Ltd. (NIPL), the international arm of the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), to create what they bill as the Middle East’s first live digital payment platform, leveraging various platforms developed by NPCI and using open-source technologies.
This is subject to regulatory approval.
This will simplify financial transactions for expatriate workers and help many who haven’t had access to banking services, Wizz Financial India CEO Angad Chadha said.
Wizz Financial India CEO Angad Chadha. (Courtesy)
Wizz Financial estimates that around 1.7 million people in the UAE are unbanked, he said.
“This is a substantial number,” Chadha continued. “So the objective is the democratization of payment. I think one of our missions has been financial inclusion because a lot of our current sort of customers are blue-collar workers, and they don’t have access to the full gamut of financial services that say, for example, someone in the UK, or someone in the US or Europe, has access to, and I think that’s been one of our missions − to address that problem and to provide the full gamut of financial services and empower these people.
“It is, to put it very simply, a sort of a single unified digital platform which incorporates all the payment systems in the country. So you have all of the participant banks, all the digital wallet providers and all the other financial institutions on one single platform,” he said.
“For the consumer, what this platform sort of does is it will create a unique ID for you. It’s basically a virtual payment address.
“And it makes sending peer-to-peer payments as simple as sending a text or WhatsApp message and it happens in real-time instantaneously. And it is secure because it has two-factor authentication,” Chadha said.
NPCI is an umbrella organization for financial settlement systems in India, known for its retail payments system called Unified Payments Interface (UPI). In 2021, UPI enabled 39 billion financial transactions amounting to roughly $940 billion worth of commerce.
The implementation of UPI in India has taken place under the guidance of the central bank (the Reserve Bank of India) and through collaboration with the payment ecosystem including financial institutions and fintech. UPI has helped to democratize payments by offering a convenient, efficient, and quick way of enabling person-to-person and person-to-merchant transactions.
The platform has led to massive transformation in financial inclusion in India, helping the unbanked to create a digital footprint and gain access to credit and other financial services.
The payment platform in the UAE is part of the company’s goal of creating a government-to-consumer platform, whereby governments will be able to securely transfer money to citizens directly, without going through banks or other intermediaries that can slow the delivery process and add fees and complications to the process.
“We are having those discussions as we speak,” said Chadha, regarding the date of the platform’s launch. “Putting a timeline is difficult but it would be game-changing.
“However, UPI has enabled India to become the world leader in real-time digital payments,” he said. “Based on UPI’s success in India, we believe it offers an opportunity to modernize the payment infrastructure and drive the digital economy in the UAE and the region.
“The payments on this platform are available 24/7, so that means I can send you the money any time of the day,” Chadha continued.
“Say I was trying to transfer money from my account in the UAE to another person with a bank account in the US. Normally, I have to go through this painstaking process of putting in all the details such as their address and IBAN [International Bank Account Number]. This eliminates that,” he said.
“And it’s safe because the data is encrypted. So what that means is when this data is moving across banks, it is encrypted. So that provides a level of safety which is very important to consumers everywhere today,” Chadha said.
It will also be a cheaper option for sending remittances, he said.
“It is going to be cheaper because as part of this ecosystem we will come up with a domestic UAE card program. So what that means is, at the moment, 99% of the card transactions which happen in the UAE are processed outside the UAE and that is one aspect which makes it cheaper. And secondly, even within the banks, it makes it cheaper because the biggest amount of work goes into verifying and checking. And this makes it much easier.
“The bedrock of this whole platform will be Emirates ID or some sort of a national database, which makes it much cheaper within the country,” Chadha said.
Once the platform is expanded across more countries, transactions will become increasingly seamless, he said.
“Our objective is to try and bring this platform to multiple countries. Once you have these different networks, you can make them interoperable. That means basically connect them up so it might be as easy for you to send money to India by just sending a text message,” Chadha said.
Dr. Hamad Al Ali, Royal Strategic Partners CEO and Wizz Financial vice chairman, said the UAE was an obvious choice when it came to launching the platform outside of India.
NIPL CEO Ritesh Shukla said, “The UAE has always been at the forefront of delivering innovative technological solutions and we are excited to bring this platform here. We are pleased to partner with Wizz Financial to enable the digitization of retail payments in the UAE.
“The UAE is a strategic market for us, given it is home to around 3.5 million people from India and also one of the top outbound travel destinations for Indians. We, at NIPL, are constantly working toward building partnerships to take NPCI’s indigenously developed payment solutions to international markets and drive digital good,” Shukla said.
Wizz Financial co-founder and Chairman Amir Nagammy also spoke about the platform’s potential for financial inclusion.
“We are honored to be working closely with the UAE government to bring this to fruition so that consumers and merchants partake in the benefits right away,” he said. “While these platforms help merchants and consumers, they also help to promote financial inclusion. The platforms can also enable individuals with a secure and convenient way to receive payments directly into their account and eliminates the need to handle cash.”
Wizz Financial specializes in cross-border payments, foreign exchange, microlending, digital wallets, and B2B payment technology solutions. It serves 25 million customers and 1,500 corporate and institutional clients in over 30 countries.
