Singapore-headquartered cross-border solutions provider Instarem has relaunched its digital remittance services in India.
This strategic re-entry into the Indian market comes with a primary focus on catering to the cross-border payment requirements of students and individuals seeking overseas education.
Instarem has been serving customers in India since 2018. However, due to a directive of the Reserve Bank of India to SBM Bank, it paused its operations temporarily in early 2023, along with many other remittance providers in the region.
For the uninitiated, in January 2023, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) directed the State Bank of Mauritius (SBM) India to stop all transactions under the Liberalised Remittance Scheme (LRS). Indian startups such as Niyo and Vested Finance were also impacted.
The Instarem brand, returning to India, is powered by Nium-Forex, an established, regulated provider of financial products and services in India. It is a regulated provider of financial products and services, as an AD-II licensee (Authorised Dealer in Foreign Exchange – Category II). It is a subsidiary of Nium Pte. Ltd., and part of the Nium Group – a global payments company and the first B2B payments unicorn in South-East Asia, as claimed by the company.
With Nium Forex one can buy and sell foreign currency, get prepaid forex cards, and transfer money to 60+ countries.
According to Instarem, a major hurdle that many individuals face with remittances for education, is funding a German blocked account or Canadian GIC account (a necessity if one wishes to study in these countries), which is a service provided by only a handful of banks.
Instarem claims to be the first remittance provider that streamlines this process by enabling users to directly deposit funds into these accounts, removing unnecessary obstacles.
Furthermore, banks frequently impose transaction limits that can restrict users. The new solution liberates its users from these limitations, enabling them to make large payments of up to INR 1.9 Cr annually, without the necessity of splitting the payment into numerous transactions. This not only simplifies the process but also makes it more economical for their customers.
Instarem has re-entered India at a time when RBI is increasing its grip on cross-border payment aggregators. In a notification issued on Tuesday (October 31), the central bank said that all entities processing cross-border transactions for the import and export of goods and services in online mode will come under its direct regulation and will be clubbed under ‘Payment Aggregator-Cross Border’ (PAs-CB) class.
The global cross-border payment transaction flows continue to see heavy traction and saw a remarkable 13% increase from 2022, as per the Global Payments Report. The driving force behind this surge has largely been global interoperability and initiatives such as immediate cross-border payments (IXB), and unified payments interface (UPI).
As per a report, the global cross-border payments market is projected to grow to a market size of $238.9 Bn by 2027.
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