BRAC Bank, TerraPay to enable faster cross-border payments

TerraPay, a global payments infrastructure company, announced a strategic partnership with BRAC Bank in pursuit of the commitment to foster financial empowerment, financial independence, and inclusion across the world.

Through this association, non-resident Bangladeshis living and working away from home in other countries can send real-time digital cross-border payments to their friends and families using TerraPay’s interoperability platform, said BRAC Bank in a statement on Thursday.

Currently, around 13 million Bangladeshi workers living abroad send close to $ 22.1 billion yearly in remittances to Bangladesh, contributing significantly to the country’s economic growth.

Most Bangladeshi migrants are blue-collar professionals who struggle to find convenient ways to send money to their families regularly. They face challenges like high remittance costs, fluctuating forex rates, or multiple transaction fees.

This increasingly expensive process pushes them to find alternative routes, like informal channels that do not guarantee security or transparency. With TerraPay and BRAC Bank joining forces, non-resident Bangladeshis can now access a secure, real-time, and affordable passage that allows them to send money to their loved ones seamlessly.

The partnership will enable BRAC Bank to leverage TerraPay’s well-entrenched merchant partner networks globally (with due regulatory coverage) with payouts to 4.5Bn+ bank accounts and 1.5Bn+ mobile wallets.

Additionally, TerraPay will be able to leverage BRAC Bank’s strong presence amongst more than 1.3 million customers and also tap into the esteemed Global Alliance for Banking on Values (GABV) network, with access to 68 financial institutions operating in key regions serving more than 60 million customers.

The collective goal of actualising a cashless society by creating an inclusive ecosystem for all drives this partnership. This opens doors to BRAC Bank’s thriving and extensive ecosystem of merchants, corporates, and SMEs using TerraPay’s adaptive and safe payments technology, boosting global financial interoperability and inclusion.

Through this partnership, TerraPay ensures real-time automated deposits into the accounts of BRAC Bank customers in Bangladesh. At the same time, customers will also be able to deposit remittances directly to Bangladesh’s leading mobile wallet, bKash, a subsidiary of BRAC Bank.

They can also withdraw their cash at any ATM across the country. Besides, transfer through bKash would allow more than 50 million bKash users to receive instant remittance globally through 200,000 agents throughout Bangladesh.

Speaking about this partnership, TerraPay Founder and CEO Ambar Sur said, “TerraPay’s state-of-the-art interoperability platform allows partners to be globally connected to the company’s wide network of 4Bn+ banks and 1.5Bn mobile wallets, thereby expanding and deepening their customer reach.

“The region of Bangladesh is an emerging market with tremendous untapped potential, and the payments segment is no exception. With TerraPay’s entry, Bangladeshi diaspora across the globe will have access to affordable, secure, and swift means to send money back home in real-time,” he said.

“Remittance is one of our prime focused businesses, and we are working hard to facilitate its continuous growth. We partnered with TerraPay, a leading global real-time cross-border payments service provider,” said BRAC Bank MD and CEO Selim R. F. Hussain.