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Founder and CEO of TerraPay, Ambar Sur | Image credit: LinkedIn

Amsterdam-based TerraPay, a digital payments infrastructure company, that allows anyone, anywhere, to send money to a mobile number instantly, announced that it has secured the money services business (MSB) license in the State Of Florida, the US. 

TerraPay also reports that the license will help its cross-border payments infrastructure to mobilise international remittances from the region in real-time, at low costs, and help offer diverse value-added financial payment services to TerraPay’s partners and its users globally.

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Ambar Sur, founder and CEO of TerraPay, says, “The MSB license is a strategic boost to our commitment to drive global financial inclusion. Our partners and customers are our number one priority, TerraPay works hard to be a law-compliance entity in different countries and regions around the world. The US license is the cornerstone of long-term development and it is based on a deep understanding of the industry.”

License to drive global financial inclusion

With this US license, the Amsterdam-based company aims to expand its partnership network in the US and LATAM region to facilitate low-cost, hassle-free, instant transactions in 96 countries. This MSB license is a major step toward TerraPay’s goal of becoming a major player in the global cross border payment ecosystem.

The MSB license means TerraPay now has 25 regulatory approvals and local licenses, connecting customers to their global partner networks – 4.5B+ Bank Accounts, 1.5B+ mobile wallets- across 192 countries and 49 settlement currencies.

According to the data published by the World Bank, the US is a significant source of country for remittances globally, followed by the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Switzerland. The report also revealed that the cost of sending money across international borders remained high, around 6.4 per cent on average in the first quarter of 2021. Sending remittances to Sub-Saharan Africa is particularly high (8 per cent).

Philip Daniel, Regional Director-Americas, TerraPay, says, “Given that the US is the largest remittance send country, our main aim is to further strengthen our footprint in the US and scale up operations in 16 counties of the LATAM region to facilitate economical, instant, borderless transactions from the US to key regions like LATAM, Asia, Europe and Africa. The new licensing arrangement will allow us to expand our payment offerings to more financial institutions and build secured payments infrastructure for businesses in the USA.”

Aims to create a safe and accessible global payments highway

Founded in 2014 by Ambar Sur, Ani Sane, Ram Sundaram and Akbar Hussain, TerraPay is a fintech mobile-first international payment network, that has been founded with the vision to send money to any mobile.

The company claims to have been building an ‘ever-expanding’ payments highway that empowers businesses to create transparent customer experiences with an uninterrupted, secure, and real-time global passage for every payment, however small or large.

TerraPay interconnects financial services providers, mobile wallet service providers, money transfer operators, banks and payment platforms – to create a “one network” for secure transnational movement of funds. The network facilitates a broad transaction set including interpersonal transfers, e-payments and government disbursements.

The company’s platform supports standard open APIs for integration with any mobile wallet provider. Through a single connection, partners gain access to a global payment network enabling rapid service up-scaling while minimising Opex and Capex investments.

TerraPay has built partnerships with global money transfer companies including Western Union, Visa, Xpress Money, MoneyTrans, Paga, Ria, Instant Cash, Ripple and MoneyGram.

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