New platform offers faster transaction

Imran Mojib, Special Correspondent

DUBAI: Sending money to India has become safer and easier as India’s leading private sector bank, Federal Bank, launched two cutting edge technology remittance variants to their bouquet of facilities. The facilities will be provided through partner exchange houses and banks for making remittance to India.

Making the announcement in Dubai on Thursday, Federal Bank MD & CEO Shyam Srinivasan said that the bank has upgraded the initial blockchain platform for remittances which was launched in December 2017 with a sophisticated technology which uses the R3 Corda blockchain platform developed in partnership with an Indian fintech company Digiledge.

He said that the new easy-to-plug-in platform enables exchange houses and banks in the Middle East to connect their existing solutions to make seamless, real-time transactions. The platform offers high level of security due to the distributed architecture and use of advanced cryptographic algorithms. Lulu Exchange, one of the leading financial services company with more than 180 branches worldwide, has gone live with this upgraded cross border remittance platform. The Bank has also launched a platform for Non-Resident Indians to send money through exchange houses and banks using an easy to remember Virtual Payment Address (VPA) of the beneficiary.

The platform which rides on the capabilities of UPI 2.0 – the upgrade of the Unified Payment Interface by National Payment Corporation of India – allows customers to make remittances to India using a virtual payment address (VPA) instead of usual account number and IFSC currently used to send money to India. VPA also provides the advantage of instantly verifying the beneficiary before sending money, thereby avoiding wrong credits and rejections.