Andrew Anastasiou, the founder of the EU based banking platform WireWallet recently announced that the company will be offering their virtual IBAN services to Indian businesses. With this new service, it would mean that Indian companies will have access to European banking without having to physically travel to the continent to open the account.
Europe is India's largest trading partner as shown in reports from 2019, where over $80B of trade was completed. This included imports from India to Europe whereby in many cases, banking and transaction safety was a huge issue. Currently, many India based businesses do not have access to EU banking and therefore experience long delays in receiving payments, as well as being hit with high EUR/INR exchange rates. There is also a security issue to take into consideration when it comes to international trade. There is a multitude of "money masters" and exchange companies that assist in international transactions, but the security of such services, as well as the regulation, can sometimes come in to question. This can cause immense inconvenience to international transactions and also the need to provide auditable accounts to respective tax authorities.
With WireWallet, Indian companies will have a solid banking base in Europe and be able to receive EUR payments directly to their account and then withdraw the funds to their local accounts when required. The system will mitigate the long and strenuous requirements usually needed to navigate international trade and will now essentially justbe a 2 step process.
Andrew Anastasiou also explained that within the accounts withWireWallet, the customer can exchange into over 100 local currencies before sending out, to further reduce costs and improve the efficiency of managing transactions. Also, each virtual IBAN issued to the user will be in the company's name, effectively showing as a fully operational bank account and depositors to the IBAN will issue the funds directly to the beneficiary of the virtual IBAN, just like you would with any other bank account.
The new product is certainly going to benefit Indian companies and the entrance of WireWallet into India will surely prove to be profitable journey.