Eko thrives less-cash economy with remittance services

Eko, a fintech company, has successfully implemented it’s remittance (money transfer) services across India with focus on customers earning in cash. During the financial year of 2016-17, Eko has processed remittances of around INR 4500 crore with an YOY growth of 82%. Through their integrations with API partners and merchants, Eko enables it’s merchants to remit money to several locations in India.

The year saw tremendous growth in states including Delhi, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Karnataka, Haryana, Andhra Pradesh and Punjab especially in locations that have a significant migrant population.

Commenting on the achievement, Abhinav Sinha, Co-founder and Chief Operating Officer, Eko India Financial Services Private Limited said, "Unlike most digital wallets which are converting digital money in credit / debit card and online banking into another form of digital money, Eko converts cash to digital money. Customer’s earning in cash is our key differentiator in terms of target customer. Our target segment has a huge need to remit money back home from urban cities to smaller cities and town. We are extremely proud of having achieved transactions worth INR 4500 crore during the last financial year.”

“India remittance business is estimated to grow and we look forward to capture the opportunity, with our expertise in remittance business and our India-wide network of Eko retail agents. The concept of digitalisation is making customer socially digital, and we want to make our customer financially digital. We are fully leveraging platforms and infrastructure including Aadhaar, NPCI, Smartphones and riding on the digital wave.”, Abhinav further added.

Eko released APIs for its domestic money transfer business which allows companies who have similar business models to plug in these APIs and extend the same to their channel partners. The APIs also allow development of innovative payment and financial services such as digital wallets, P2P transfers and in store and online payments. Eko is one of the top 2 merchant assisted IMPS transaction initiators in India; it also had the lowest transaction failure rates of 1.3% in the industry.

Eko is rapidly expanding its network and currently has more than 20,000 merchant across 28 states with the help of its API and merchant partners. In 2016, Eko also launched it’s first international tie-up for remittance services with Nepal’s Prabhu Money Group.

Over the last 10 years, Eko has transacted over INR 20,000 crores with a registered customer base of 1.5 crore over 20,000 merchant points.