BookMyForex starts testing international money transfers to Visa debit cards under RBI's regulatory sandbox

Gurgaon (Haryana) [India], December 11 (ANI/NewsVoir): BookMyForex, India's largest online foreign currency exchange platform, was recently selected to participate in RBI's regulatory sandbox with the theme of cross border payments. As part of the regulatory sandbox, BookMyForex has started testing an alternative method of transferring funds online to overseas beneficiaries.
Customers can simply enter the Visa Debit Card number of their recipient abroad instead of getting cumbersome details such as the customer's foreign bank name, address, account number, SWIFT/BIC code, sort code/transit code etc. The entire process of booking the transfer post all regulatory checks takes no more than a few minutes. YES BANK is partnering in this project to facilitate quick LRS limit checks. In most cases, the beneficiary will receive funds abroad in less than 30 minutes after the payment is made.
*Customers can send international money transfers by just entering their foreign recipient's Visa Debit Card number in this testing phase.
*Test results show that transfers are sent in near real-time and in under 30 minutes.
*Fully online process with digital Aadhaar based KYC and online payment.
*Zero fees or charges to send the transfer - Zero SWIFT charges, bank sending or receiving charges or any other kind of bank sending charges.
Transfers to Visa Debit Cards are sent via the Visa Direct network as opposed to the traditional SWIFT international money transfer network. As a result, recipients receive funds abroad in near real-time. Also since banks are not involved in the processing of transactions or sending out traditional swift messages, customers also avoid paying any sending or receiving bank charges, which are often as high as Rs. 3500 per transaction when sending money via traditional banks. BookMyForex also has extremely competitive forex rates which can save the customer an additional 2-5 per cent on their transfer.
Commenting on the development, Nitin Motwani, Co-founder & CTO, BookMyForex.com said, "While there has been massive improvement over the past few years in domestic payments, international payments from India continue to be complex, slow and expensive. Our vision has always been to make cross border remittances just as simple and cheap as a regular UPI transfer. Transfers via Visa Direct can make that dream a reality. Visa Direct transfers happen instantly, within a few seconds after they are initiated and the cost to execute them is extremely low."
Earlier this year, BookMyForex had introduced a fully online international remittance process that allowed customers to complete their KYC, AML and payment in 5 minutes. Coupled with Visa Direct, BookMyForex claims that the time taken for the entire process from placing the remittance request to the end beneficiary receiving the funds can be reduced to as little as 30 minutes.
In its launch phase, the Visa Direct service through BookMyForex is limited to select countries and banks that support instant fund transfers. Currently, transfers are supported from India to UK, Singapore, Oman, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Norway and Poland, where most banks support instant transfers. Visa Direct orders can be placed on BookMyForex during regular bank treasury hours (10 am - 15:30 pm, Mon-Fri IST) and transfers are capped to a maximum of USD 2500 per transfer or USD 15000 per customer during the sandbox period. Further transfers can only be sent to individuals (not institutions or businesses) for the purpose of family maintenance or gift.
During the period of the sandbox, BookMyForex has also decided to waive off all charges for transferring funds abroad when the customer applies the following promo code: ZEROBANKFEE.
BookMyForex is India's first and largest online forex platform that allows customers to buy, sell or transfer foreign currency. BookMyForex offers multi-currency prepaid forex cards, cross border money transfers and foreign currency note exchange, via a network of 5000-plus partner locations across 650 cities in India.
For more information, please visit www.bookmyforex.com or contact care@bookmyforex.com.
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