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Satyendra Pathak
Doha
An extremely popular banking service among the Asian expatriate workers living in Qatar, Commercial Bank's (CB) '60 Seconds Remittance' has achieved the milestone of one million transactions in just over a year's time since it was launched in June last year.
A first-of-its-kind in Qatar, Commercial Bank's 60 Seconds Remittance service allows customers to send money abroad especially to Asian countries within one minute.
Customers can access the service through Commercial Bank Internet Banking and Mobile Banking App to send money to banks in India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal and the Philippines almost instantly.
Addressing a media round table in Doha, Commercial Bank Consumer Banking EGM Amit Sah said that transactions through '60 Seconds Remittance' service picked up pace since the beginning of this year and a majority of the one million transactions was carried out in the first half of 2018 alone.
While it took us a little over one year to achieve the first one million mark, Sah said he was quite optimistic that the second one million mark will be achieved in six months and the following one million marks in not more than three to four months. Given the popularity of 60 Seconds Remittance service, Sah said, the bank expects its share in Qatar's remittance market to go up from the current 20 percent to 35 percent in the near future.
The 60 Seconds Remittance service was initially launched in June 2017 for remittances to India. Due to its popularity among customers, it was later extended to Pakistan, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and Nepal.
Today, it is available to 28 banks in India, 35 banks in the Philippines, 26 banks in Sri Lanka, 29 banks in Pakistan and 28 banks in Nepal. It covers almost 95 percent of banks in each country.
Sah said,"Our aim is to use digital technology to transform our customer experience. Before launching the 60 Seconds Remittance service, we asked our customers, through surveys and focus groups, how we could make their lives easier.
"For expatriate customers, the answer was clear that they were fed up with spending their time queuing in banks or exchange houses during their weekends to transfer money.
"Our solution was the 60 Seconds Remittance service. It is a service that is convenient, quick, easy to use, secure and available 24 hours, seven days a week. It is also cost-effective, offering market-leading exchange rates and competitively priced fees as low as QR5 per transaction."
He said,"Because we knew that it was going to fulfill a real demand in the Qatar market for a convenient bank transfer service, it is no surprise to us that the use of the 60 Seconds Remittance is so high.
"We are working to expand the service in the future to cover more countries like UK, European Union (EU) countries and regional countries like Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt."
In terms of number of customers, Sah said, India is the most popular country to send remittance by using the 60 Seconds Remittance service.
Both in terms of transaction volume and value, India leads other remittance corridors, he said.
Highlighting the impact of 60 Seconds Remittance service on the bank's bottom line, he said,"Commercial Bank and its subsidiaries and associates reported a net profit of QR855 million in the first half of 2018. This is a 376 percent increase compared to the same period last year. Undoubtedly, the 60 Seconds Remittance service was vital in driving profit of the company."
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20/09/2018
926