Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank (ADIB), a leading Islamic financial institution, has launched a new service that allows customers to transfer funds instantly from the UAE to recipients in India as part of the bank’s commitment to innovation and introducing next-generation of payments and remittance services.
The service is available 24×7 and allows customers to use their mobile application or internet banking to make transfers without the need to withdraw cash or visit a transfer office. Customers also receive updates and notifications, including an optional receipt for confirming the delivery of the funds.
The service was launched in partnership with SWIFT, a financial messaging services provider, and ICICI, an Indian clearing bank. The partnership links SWIFT’s Global Payments Innovation (GPI) to ADIB and ICICI’s local infrastructure. It eliminates delays and provides a fast, secure, and convenient way to transfer funds.
Previously, cross-border fund transfers would often be delayed when being processed by the local clearing infrastructure. The introduction of SWIFT GPI Instant eliminates these delays, providing a fast, secure, and convenient way to transfer funds.
The UAE is the second largest remittance sender in the world, while India is the largest recipient of remittances. With over 3.5 million Indian citizens working in the UAE, the initiative targets a key country for UAE remittances.
Samih Awadhalla Acting Global Head Retail Banking Group ADIB
“With this new launch, ADIB strengthens its commitment towards digital transformation and innovation and cements its status as the preferred financial partner in the UAE. Our partnership with SWIFT and ICICI Bank is in line with the Bank’s overall strategy of helping customers and supporting them through ease of automation, convenience, and safety. It also demonstrates our focus on leveraging new evolving technologies and opportunities, offering customers feature-rich digital payments and remittance services.”
“The SWIFT GPI Instant service between UAE and India is the latest to demonstrate how banks can leverage GPI to deliver instant account-to-account payments and open new services and markets. This follows a similar initiative in the UK, which is delivering cross-border payments via GPI into the domestic Faster Payments System. SWIFT has also run pilots with market infrastructures in Australia, Singapore, Europe and Malaysia, and we are in discussions with market infrastructures in other locations as well.” said Mr. Sido Bestani, Managing Director, of Middle East Africa and Indian subcontinent, at SWIFT.
Mr. Sriram H. Iyer, Head – International Banking Group, at ICICI Bank said, “We are delighted to partner with ADIB to facilitate seamless remittances from the UAE to India. ICICI Bank has been a dominant player in inward remittances to India, the largest recipient of cross-border remittances in the world. We were the first bank in Asia-Pacific to go live with the ‘SWIFT GPI Instant’ solution last year, which helps overseas partner banks send instant remittances on behalf of their customers to the beneficiary in India. Under the partnership with ADIB, ICICI Bank receives the inward remittance request, being sent by ADIB via ‘SWIFT GPI Instant’, and processes it instantly.”
