KUALA LUMPUR (June 11): Ria Money Transfer has launched its new Ria Wallet app, offering money transfers, QR payments, remittance and other services tailored for unbanked migrant workers.

The Ria Wallet has been approved by the Department of Labour under the Ministry of Human Resources for the disbursement of digital wage payments.

In addition to digital services, Ria provides physical support through its 78 stores across Malaysia, where face-to-face onboarding is available. Semi-digital services are also offered, allowing customers to make offline payments over the counter via the wallet.

“Ria is unique in a sense that we offer omni-experience compared to many of our other operators … Our objective is to offer maximum value to the immigrant. So whatever hard-earned money they have earned here, they could send money back to their family,” said Ramesh Chaulagain, country manager of Ria Money Transfer Malaysia, at the Le Meridien Hotel Kuala Lumpur.

Users can make free withdrawals from Ria’s ATMs, made possible by its parent company, Euronet, which has deployed around 1,400 ATMs nationwide. Ria also leverages its global physical network of 624,000 locations to facilitate transfers and remittances to a wide range of countries.

“We like to offer more free of cost services to our customers because we want them to be more active customers when it comes to money transfers. We are able to do this because of our access to our networks,” said Fahad Rehman, senior director of digital wallets at Ria Money Transfer.

Ria Wallet is regulated by Bank Negara Malaysia and holds an e-money licence to conduct financial services.

This also means the wallet complies with BNM’s cybersecurity requirements and electronic know-your-customer (eKYC) procedures, easing the sign-up process for migrant workers.

“All the user journeys are being kept in mind. [We know that this demographic may] not be very tech-savvy customers, but we still want to give them a digital experience. We have multi-lingual support for all migrant workers,” said Fahad.

Originally from New York, Ria began as a money transfer service in 1987 and has since expanded to a network of 507,000 locations across 160 countries.