Xare, a newly developed app for sending remittances back home, is also seeking to help users avoid family arguments over how the money is spent.
“The moment the migrant sends cash to their families back home, they lose control over how it is spent and they cannot budget it,” said Milind Singh, founder of Rise, the UAE-based financial services start-up behind the app.
The female remittances market could benefit from Xare on the back of studies which indicate that females are the decision-makers when it comes to spending on household needs and the education and healthcare of their children.
When migrants do not have control over how their money is spent back home, it can lead to tensions with their family members, he added.
Milind Singh, founder of Rise, the UAE-based financial services start-up behind the app
“Between 50-75 percent of migrants surveyed, depending on which market you look at, says sending cash remittances spoils the relationship with the person they send it to,” Singh told Arabian Business, referencing the results of a survey conducted by UniTeller, an international money transfer processing company.
With apps like Xare, migrants can grant the receiver access to their money instead of giving them cash. “Xare was born to say why do we need to move money to give access to it? Why don’t we just move access to the spend?” said Singh.
He said the expats working in the UAE can give their family back home access to the money through Xare and is fully in control of how the money is spent – setting limits and looking at all transactions.
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According to Singh, almost 70 percent of the migrants in the UAE earn less than AED5,000 per month and therefore cannot open a bank account. Those have no other choice than sending cash back home.
“Not having a bank account created a problem on both sides. This is how Xare came about,” explained Singh.
“When Covid happened, the issue with cash remittances got worse because the money transfer places shut down both here and back home,” he added.
Xare allows the user to divide the amount between several receivers and to shut off access to the money at will.
Almost 51 percent of the migrants in the UAE earn less than AED5,000 per month
Singh said he believes Xare has wider implications as it can be used as a replacement for giving family members their credit card.
Still in its beta phase, Xare will be available for online use globally by mid-November and offline as well in India, using a Unified Payment Interface (UPI).
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