India is the world’s largest receiver of remittances . Besides making it faster and easier, Bitcoin could help India save up to $7 billion in fees paid to international remittance companies and add this amount to the country’s wealth.
According to India’s Economic Times , foreigners living in Gulf countries, most of which are Indians, sent about US$100 billion in remittances. A lot of these Gulf-based Indians are working as blue collar workers and have families that are dependant on them back home.
However, there is not only money being sent back to India. In fact, a lot of money is also flowing out. Ibtimes.co.in reports that in FY 16, Indians sent US$4 billion alone to students studying outside the country.
Traditionally, all this money is sent by parents who are supporting the higher education of their children. Most Indian people tend to either use wire transfer services like Western Union or Moneygram or banking channels like SWIFT.
Western Union in India has a partnership with India Post, the Indian post office that allows them access to nearly 10,000 post offices throughout India. The Western Union network is well recognized in India and they have over 110,000 agents in the country. The Indian remittance scene
We wanted to better understand how the Indian remittance market is structured so we talked with some players who operate in India.
ZebPay Co-founder and COO, Sandeep Goenka says, “India is the world’s biggest remittance market at more than $70 billion.”
He points out that the majority of the remittance is small amounts of around $200. For small amounts especially, users end up paying up to 15% in fees to companies like PayPal , Western Union or to banks through transfer and exchange rate fees. BitcoinCT r: 8 makes it extremely easy to send a small remittance back home.Besides […]
