Verify, Authenticate and Transact with 160 million people of Bangladesh from anywhere in the world
About
Applicant name: HomePay Transaction Platform
Innovation Name: Cross Border Payment Network and KYC in a single API
Innovation Type: Product
Website: http://www.homepay.io
Mission: Verify, Authenticate and Transact with 160 million people of Bangladesh from anywhere in the world
Innovation Description: HomePay’s cross border real-time transaction platform offers a single API that is used by Digital Remittance/ wallet to instantly KYC and transact with 160 million people of Bangladesh, the 9th largest remittance recipient country in the world. This KYC part of the API is the only API in the country that can instantly verify and authenticate a citizen directly from the National ID database or the Birth Registration Database of the Government. The Payment Network part of the API can send payment details instantly to anyone that has a mobile phone, whether they have a existing Mobile Wallet or not. HomePay put this solution together for the last 5 years, working closely with the Government of Bangladesh, and major banks and digital wallets of Bangladesh. Today our API is used by the likes of PayPal Xoom, Skrill/Neteller and other app based remittance platforms. Cash Pick up often is done in remote areas where proper KYC is not done during the cash pick up process. HomePay can make cash pick up and wallet transfers fully compliant.
Innovation Inspiration: I kept seeing Bangladeshi online workers and freelancer’s struggle to take home their earnings. Talent and work came from South Asia in particular, yet the Western Payment Platforms decided their fate. Millons of young people’s livelihoods from Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Nepal and Sri Lanka depended on a handful of Global payment platforms like PayPal, Skrill and Neteller. As an experienced entrepreneur from Silicon Valley with Bangladeshi roots, I decided to explore the issues. We decided to try and solve the KYC and Compliance issues faced by these payment platforms to provide full service to Bangladeshi online citizens. We met with these platforms and understood the challenges. We also saw the payment connectivity issues and attempted to solve that as well. HomePay now not only easily connects these payment platforms and remittance companies via a single API but also solves the KYC and Compliance checks needed. The biggest advantage is that all this is via a single API call to HomePay in a unified platform.
Who benefits from the innovation most? Although we started with the likes of PayPal Xoom and Skrill and Neteller type payment platforms, soon we were approached by digital app cased MTO’s like TapTap send or Tranglo who needed the easy instant connectivity to Bangladeshi bank accounts via a single API. Today on the digital MTO side, we focus on Send countries that are key to Bangladesh – USA, UK, The Middle east and South East Asia like Singapore and Malaysia. We are seeing increasing importance of Italy and South Africa. We would love to get more traction from the new digital players like Transferwise, Remitly, WorldRemit and payment platforms like Stripe and Payoneer. For them to get Transaction Processing Volume of the major Bangladesh market, they need to be able to first be able to do proper KYC.
What are you most proud of about your innovation? What we are most proud of with our offering is that we were able to convince the central bank and leading local remittance banks about our model. It’s different since HomePay is a payment network, not an MTO and we were allowed to operate with this model for the first time in Bangladesh. We also overcame some technical challenges that the largest banks had and were able to get them to make changes to their systems to enable instant account deposit within seconds. Many people told us we could not do it but 3 years after going live, we are growing at 134% yearly CAGR.
What is very unique in our offering is that the same platform offers full kyc and payments in the same transaction in real time. We are also very unique because we are the only Non-Bank led and bank independent Technology platform.
Status of Innovation: In-market
Innovation Active Since: 08/01/2017
Applicant Type: Private Company
Headquarter City: Fremont, California
Headquarter Country: USA
Year Founded: 2015
Main Category
Main Category Choice: Compliance Solution
Why do you think you should win this category?:
What is truly unique about HomePay is it is the ONLY kyc platform in Bangladesh that can verify a citizen’s National ID and authenticate them in real-time. This innovation is enabling all kinds of payment solutions previously unattainable. Bangladeshis are able to join global platforms because now they can be digitally kyc’ed. Even the Bangladesh government has thrown their full support behind us and we are extremely proud of what we’ve achieved in less than 1 year.
The impact has been enormous. Over 10 leading banks have been able to offer online digital banking because of this capability. Foreign payment platforms like Skrill and Neteller ( Paysafe) can target various services to Bangladeshis now because they can be compliant.
Secondary Category
Secondary Category Choice: B2B Solution
Why do you think you should win this category?
HomePay is the first payment network focussed on remittance and cross border payments to and from Bangladesh. This is unique because a payment network who is not a Money Transfer service or an aggregator is a brand new model. This allows the MTO’s to directly settle FX with the bank’s at the bank’s rate. HomePay also is a “Covid friendly” – it only does digital channel, no cash pick up. It is the only payment network that can deposit in any bank account, any mobile phone and soon any card in Bangladesh. Instantly.
Team Members
Full Name: Rubel Ahsan
Role: Co-Founder, CEO
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/
Full Name: Taherul Bahar
Role: Country Director, Bangladesh
Link: https://www.linkedin.com/in/
Full Name: Hasib Hasan Tarafder
Role: Director, Product Management, Bangladesh
Link: https://www.linkedin.com/in/
Full Name: Dan Parker
Role: Head of Technology, California
Supporting Links
Entry Representative
Full Name: Rubel Ahsan
Role: Co-Founder, CEO
