Global fintechs bet on India's prepaid forex cards as travel demand surges

Global fintechs like Revolut and Wise are lining up multicurrency prepaid forex cards for booming outbound traveller base, offering lower markups, wider acceptance, smoother cross-border transactions

Global fintech players are leveraging their global reach and cross-border licensing capabilities as they eye India’s rapidly-expanding base of outbound travellers by offering multicurrency prepaid forex cards.

 

International fintech firms are banking on lower markups, better acceptance, and faster payments processing when it comes to their plans to issue these cards in India.

 

UK-based Revolut, which received the Reserve Bank of India’s (RBI) prepaid payments instruments (PPI) authorisation earlier this year, is issuing a domestic card and a multicurrency prepaid card, for which it has an authorised dealer II (AD-II) licence.

 

In total, the firm has over four lakh waitlisted users in the country.

 

Similarly, Wise, another UK fintech company, is launching its multicurrency prepaid forex card in India. The company is armed with an AD-II approval along with an in-principle approval to become a payments aggregator for cross-border payments (PA-CB) for exports.

 

Wise clocked 75,000 waitlisted users in a month.

 

“On the multi-currency card, many people are traveling overseas including students, people traveling for business or work, and leisure, and their payment needs are jumping multifold overseas,” Paroma Chatterjee, chief executive officer (CEO), Revolut India, told Business Standard.

 

The focus on the Indian market comes at a time when the country clocked 30.89 million outbound travellers in 2024, a 10.8 per cent increase over the previous year.

 

Top destinations such as United Arab Emirates (UAE), Saudi Arabia, the United States, Thailand, Singapore, the United Kingdom, Qatar, Canada, Kuwait, and Oman account for about 71 per cent of all Indians’ departures in 2024, data shows.

 

“From a pricing point of view, our study shows that close to 2-4 per cent on average is what customers are losing out on when it comes to forex markups,” said Taneia Bhardwaj, South Asia expansion lead at Wise.

 

Fintechs believe this price can go to as low as less than one per cent of the total transaction value if a prepaid forex card is utilised.

 

Global reach makes a difference

 

Wise is present in 70 countries, while Revolut presence spans about 41 countries, which makes their network easier to access for someone travelling out of India.

 

“One advantage is with the presence, there is a Revolut-to-Revolut transfer where we don’t have to pay to anybody else. We can really pass on that benefit to the customer and make it affordable. The largest moat that Revolut insists on building in any country that it gets into is securing our own licenses,” Chatterjee added.

 

Bhardwaj pointed out that Wise's cards support 40 currencies and is accepted across more than 160 countries on Visa’s network.

 

With global presence, firms can localise their card offerings to users in India such as partnerships with other companies and rewards.

 

“Our focus right now is to deepen products and localise them in the best way possible to delight customers, improve their experience. And more than anything else, make it cheaper (to transact),” Bhardwaj said.