Posted On 20/03/2018
By Ollie Walsh
Two of PiP iT’s co-founders will be attending the Seamless Payments event this April 15th and 16th in Dubai.
This is a major international Payments event, which runs simultaneously with Seamless Fintech, E-commerce and retail, and will be the PiP iT team’s first visit to the region.
‘The Middle East is a key region for us’ says Ollie Walsh co-founder and CEO of PiP iT. ‘There is a significant migrant population in each of the Middle East countries and for them, getting access to banking is an issue. In UAE for example, 80% of the population are migrants. In Kuwait, the number is 70%. Opening a bank account requires meeting minimum salary/monthly lodgements, which many people can’t do. Bank accounts can also require specific visas, which not all migrant workers will have. Migrants get paid in cash and have to pay large fees to remit cash home to their family. This is where the PiP iT bill pay model is ideal. Instead of remitting the cash, the consumer logs onto an app, creates a bar code for the bill they want to pay at home. They then go into a retail partner and scan the bar code and pay the bill with cash over the counter.’
According to Julian Callaghan, co-founder and COO of PiP iT, ‘we can offer this service at much more attractive rates than remittance for two reasons: Firstly, as the funds go directly into a biller account and is not received as cash by an individual, we are in a different regulatory space. The second is that PiP iT is a Social Enterprise and though we are a For Profit company, we keep our margins as low as possible, so the migrant and their families get the maximum benefit from the transaction.’
Ollie and Julian are now booking meetings for their time at the conference. If you’d like to meet with them and discuss the opportunity to partner with them, email Ollie on ollie.walsh@pipit.global
