Wall Street Exchange to expand presence, create over 100 jobs
Wall Street Exchange Centre, a leading currency exchanges and financial solutions provider in the UAE, plans to increase the number of its branches to 50 by 2015, adding over 100 employees to its payrolls during the expansion process.
“We are aiming to expand our network in the UAE and will have 50 branches by the end of 2015. We expect to open six to seven branches before year-end,” Sultan Bin Kharsham, Managing Director, Wall Street Exchange Centre, said on Thursday.
“We plan to hire over 100 people as we expand our network,” he added.
Although Kharsham did not disclose the total remittances handled by Wall Street in 2013, he expects their remittance business to grow by over 35 per cent this year.
Wall Street Exchange, part of the Emirates Post Group, currently, has 29 branches across the country and employs 420 people.
Finding a good location is becoming difficult since malls have limited space for exchange centres, Kharsham said, revealing the company was in talks with Emirates Post to open branches in some of their locations.
“Emirates Post is in over 150 locations across the UAE. We are in talks with them to open our branches in their locations.”
Besides, the company is even looking at expanding overseas, planning three new branches in London and five in Hong Kong.
Instant cash to India
In order to serve the Indian expatriate community in the UAE, Wall Street Exchange has already signed up with India Post, the world’s largest postal network serving over 1.2 billion people, providing instant cash service across 17,500 post offices.
“The service is now available. We are looking at expanding our service to other post offices as well,” Kharsham said.
Indian Post has a network of over 155,000 post offices.
According to the latest World Bank report, India received $71 billion in remittances in 2013, followed by China ($60 billion), the Philippines ($26 billion), Mexico ($22 billion), Nigeria ($21 billion) and Egypt ($20 billion). It added that worldwide remittance flow is expected to reach $540 billion in developing countries and over $700 billion worldwide by 2016.
Paytime debit card
In order to serve the low-income group better, people who earn less than Dh2,000 per month, Wall Street Exchange has launched Paytime, a new debit card.
“Paytime comes loaded with massive benefits including free insurance coverage and brings the non-banking five million workers into the retail banking system. It levies no charges for cash withdrawal from 600 ATMs and offers free cash withdrawal from all our branches,” Kharsham said.
Paytime debit card is in full compliance with the Wages Protection System (WPS) and authorised by the Ministry of Labour and the Central Bank of the UAE, comes with free insurance cover for Paytime cardholders residing in the UAE.
Wall Street Exchange has also expanded its reach to over 5 million customers across the country by setting up a network of 500 remittance kiosks.