The launch of a credit card remittance service has been announced by Mashreq Bank, which is based in Dubai. The service will enable customers to make use of their credit cards in order to make money transfers instantaneously to all banks within Pakistan and India, with zero cash advance charges and no fees.
The brand-new service can be accessed by customers by making use of Snapp, Mashreq’s mobile banking app, and is intended to make remittance transfers much simpler than has been the case in the past. Mashreq Bank’s Head of Remittances Rohit Garg says that the bank is aware of the importance of being able to send money to family and friends back home and that when unexpected circumstances arise, they want to be able to give their full support to the financial needs of their customers by providing them with the flexibility to make such payments 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Garg says that the bank expects expatriate customers to welcome the new service, and that Mashreq is committed to coming up with ever more innovative methods to allow customers to manage their day-to-day finances in a more convenient, simple and seamless manner. Mashreq Quick Remit launched two years ago back in 2017, and since its introduction, the service has experienced an increase in remittances for Mashreq of as much as 73%.
The UAE’s latest quarterly report states that India was responsible for AED13.6m in total cash sent via exchange houses and banks in just the fourth quarter of last year, with second place going to Pakistan, which had a total share of as much as AED3.8bn, which accounted for 9.4% of the full remittances. Expat remittances from the whole of the UAE came to a total figure of AED39.9m in 2018’s fourth quarter, with AED30.4bn transferred through money exchange companies and AED9.5bn transferred via banks. In second place was the Philippines with 7.2%, followed by the US in third place with 5.9% and Egypt with 5.5% in fourth place. Mashreq Bank says that it wants to duplicate the success of the service that it offers to customers in India and Pakistan and expand Quick Remit into a number of other expatriate communities throughout additional territories.
With over 200 nationalities, only 20% of which are actually citizens, the UAE has one of the highest percentages of immigrants in the entire world, and therefore also one of the biggest remittance markets. Because of that enormous volume of remittances, there are a number of different options by which people in the UAE can send money. Exchange houses and banks are by far the most popular, but some of the other methods include the likes of cryptocurrency and app-based/e-transfer transfers. With such a large volume of money involved, the decision by Mashreq Bank to launch a new credit card remittance service to its customers in Pakistan and India makes a great deal of financial sense.
