Paritosh (name changed) works at a managerial position in a reputed company that produces customised equipment for industrial use. The company produces equipment on order not only for Indian industries, but also has global customers. That makes Paritosh travel outside India a lot to supervise installations of the industrial equipments and on other assignments.
Apart from his professional duty abroad, the issue he needs to deal with is making payments in currency of that particular country that he visits. Moreover, some under developed and developing countries predominantly transact in cash, while in developed countries mostly card or other non-cash payments are encouraged.
So, in some countries he needs to visit money changers and/or banks to get money converted in the local currencies and in some countries he need to make arrangements to make cashless transactions, but both involve determining conversion ratio from Indian Rupee (INR) to currency of that particular country that for that spot forex rates are needed. Absence of ready information on spot conversion rate would mean he will be at the mercy of money changers.
“In some countries I need to convert INR to the local currencies and in some others, I use credit card for payments. Although, card payments are convenient, but the problem is that the transactions made in foreign currencies are converted to INR on the date the generating the credit card bill. So, while making payments, I can’t assess how much credit card bill I have to pay depending on favourable or unfavourable currency exchange rates on the date of generation of the bill,” said Paritosh.
Not only Paritosh, many other persons who work in MNCs and businessmen involved in import and export business and their employees, who need to travel out of country frequently, have to negotiate such payment issues.
To solve the ‘transactional blues’ for international travelers, Wall Street Forex (WSFx), has introduced a multi-purpose instrument called the WSFx Smart Currency Card with a dedicated companion app to facilitate easy card management for travelers.
Launched in association with YES Bank, M2P Solutions and VISA, the WSFx Smart Currency card is accepted across 31.4 million+ VISA merchant outlets. It is also compatible with 10 key international currencies namely USD, GBP, EUR, CAD, AUD, SGD, AED, JPY, SAR, THB along with INR. The Near Field Communication (NFC) feature enabled card offers the option to customers to tap and pay.
The dedicated app of the multi-purpose instrument not only provides real time information on forex rates and other distinct service offering that sets it apart from various international transaction assisting instruments out there, the WSFx card comes with a dedicated INR digital wallet to cater to domestic purchases at VISA merchant establishments as well.
The app allows users to –
- Get live forex rates
- Reload of cards
- Easy transfer between currency wallets
- Monitor complete transaction history
- Generate and change PIN online and temporarily block card remotely
“The WSFx smart currency card is an all-in-one convenience maximising product serving as the perfect smart companion for the smart traveler. It adds a strong dimension of convenience and speed to international transactions. We are glad to have associated with YES Bank and VISA to enhance the scope and effectiveness of the product and optimize the applicability of the Card and are confident of it being the product of choice for corporates, students travelers and the new age millennials,” said Dilip Modi, Chairman of WSFx.