PiP iT Launches Mumbai Office.

Posted On 27/04/2018

By admin

The founders of PiP iT have announced the launch of their India office, which is based in Mumbai.

PiP iT have developed the world’s first International Cash Transaction Platform. The platform is designed to work with migrants who have no bank account in the country they live in and so have no choice but to use expensive cash transfer services to remit money to support their families at home.

‘We saw this market as an opportunity for a Social Enterprise like PiP iT to work with the migrant population to make it cheaper and easier to support family members. The less money the migrant has to spend on fees to transfer cash, the more money they have to support their own lives in their new country or they can send more money home’ explains Ollie Walsh, PiP iT Co-Founder and CEO.

‘India is the world’s largest recipient of remittance, so for us is a key market. There is a rapidly growing number of FinTech companies providing payment services, but apart from PiP iT, they all start with the assumption that the consumer has a bank account and can use an app or similar service to transact’, Walsh explains further, ‘however in the Middle East region for example, 30% of the population are Indian nationals and 80% of those don’t have bank accounts. This is due to local work visa restrictions.’

As part of opening an office in Mumbai, PiP iT also appointed Yash Rawal as Head of Business Development for India. Yash’s background is in working with international tech companies to launch and build their businesses in India.

The PiP iT team of Ollie, Yash and Julian Callaghan, Co-Founder and COO along with Isha Saraf of Enterprise Ireland’s India team met with twelve potential business partners in the market, from the banking, telco, billing and retail segments many of whom will be working with PiP iT to offer its services to Indian migrants living abroad.

Julian Callaghan describes how PiP iT works, ‘With our platform, migrants living abroad don’t have to remit cash to family anymore. They can log onto one of PiP iT’s partner apps and pay for services, lodge money to a home bank account or ewallet, pay bills directly, all in cash. The PiP iT platform generates a barcode for the transaction which the customer receives on their phone. They then bring the barcode to any of our collection partners, scan it and pay in cash. Once the barcode is scanned, we know the transaction has been completed and update the relevant account. Right now, we have 26,000 pay in points in UK, Canada and South Africa and are adding to that number around Africa, the Middle East and Asia.’

As well as being much cheaper than sending cash home, PiP iT is also safer as no one has to collect cash and the sender has control of the money as they select what is being paid, unlike cash remittance where the money can get spent elsewhere leaving bills outstanding.

PiP iT has been transacting international cash bill payments for the last twelve months from UK to West Africa and is now expanding into additional markets globally.