HMT

Currently no such technology like HMT exists or widely used, companies like Paypal unfortunately do not operate in Afghanistan due to multi faceted reasons. Afghanistan is in desperate need of modernisation and technological infrastructure. With this, the system of sending money from abroad to Afghanistan is highly unregulated and insecure. Remittances are largely facilitated through the informal and paperless hawala system, a system of money transfer based on trust relationships between distant brokers which can sometimes lead to issues like, stealing, irregular conversion rates, money laundering and illegal activities.  The brokers in this case also charge unfair currency exchange rates, which unfortunately is the only option for many families and individuals. 

Additionally, Afghanistan has a long history of humanitarian aid influx into the country, however the impacts are heavily hampered with the high rates of corruption and bribery that exists in the country. Humanitarian aid is often not reaching the most needed and vulnerable groups directly, for example those living in poverty or women.

This affects the millions of Afghans in the country as well as the network of Afghan diasporas dispersed internationally that are involved in the act of sending money. There are more than 2.6 million registered Afghan refugees around the world according to the UNHCR, and an estimation of 27 million cellular mobile connections were active in Afghanistan in early 2023. HMT works to bring in international and local stakeholders together for financial inclusion and empowerment.

Halal Money Transfer is Afghanistan's first online banking and remittance app, the system is mainly built on sending and receiving money with QR codes.

The system works similar to other money transfer systems like Western Union and Ria. HMT operates with a system of local agents and institutions that allows the money to be collected and withdrawn from vetted agents. For example, a family member outside Afghanistan can send money to a family member in Jalalabad using our online platform. The individual in Jalalabad would visit their closest vetted HMT agent that will release the funds in person. Similarly, a business can also receive money from their customers in exchange for their services, thus providing a new method for online transactions and allowing small scale business to grow. 

HMT focuses on providing financial services to Afghans. There are two streams of demographics we focused on:

1) The local businesses and individuals in Afghanistan engage in financial transactions either domestically or supporting overseas investment and remittances. These users are more likely settled in urban cities such as Kabul, Herat and Kandahar which have their own businesses and may have connections with family or friends abroad. With many other financial technologies now unavailable in Afghanistan, as well as the Hawala system being risky and unreliable, we hope to bridge the gap. 

2) Another demographic is working with rural communities and businesses outside of the major cities, such as Jalalabad. Our goal is to bring the use of financial technologies and applications for the first time in these communities. This group has been underserved in these technologies which will be a large step in modernising the community.

We have diverse team with expertise in different fields:

Omar Haider: With his background and experience in digital currency and finances, Mr Haider is committed to providing halal and islamic alternatives to muslims around the world. 

Farhad Luden: With over two decades of experience Mr Luden oversees operations, ensuring seamless service delivery. His background in banking and customer relations helps provide Islamic financial services to our customers. 

Abobakar Miakhel: Abobakar has co-founded several social app enterprises, with his background of physics and mechanical engineering. His initiatives have garnered international recognition, for example winning the European Charlemagne Youth Prize in 2023 hosted by the European Parliament and The International Charlemagne Prize of Aachen, the WSA Young Innovators award and European Young Innovators award in 2022. He is a young Afghan refugee who settled down in Belgium, and despite his early challenges and tough journey, he has emerged as a role model for refugees and youths for peacebuilding. Previously he was part of the UNESCO Digital Games of Peace Program, King Baudouin’s BOOST foundation, as well as the European Commission Peace Ambassador Scholarship for the One Young World Conference. 

Sadat Said Hamza: Hamza is an existent and experienced money transfer agent in Europe who has 2 years experience in money remittance and helping people send remittance from Belgium to Ukraine, Afghanistan, African countries like Nigeria Ghana and so on. He provides the expertise of the remittance and transaction done on the ground in Europe and Afghanistan.

Hazrat Shah: Has worked with USAID marketing in Afghanistan for over a decade. Has experience in sales and knows the market in Afghanistan.

HMT is currently in the pilot stage with the technology, systems and partnership established. Our next step is launching the technology all over the country. We have secured partnership with the largest bank in Afghanistan which is the islamic bank of Afghanistan. The partnership and feedback gained in our pilot launch will allow us to rapidly grow and use the existing system. 

What drew Halal Money Transfer to applying SOLVE MIT is the rare opportunity to partner with international mentors and network, as well as growing with other innovative projects and practices globally. Afghanistan unfortunately is a very closed off country especially under the regime change, has led the country to be further cut off from aid and investment. We believe that SOLVE MIT will also provide us with the crucial tailored support and exposure to grow HMT to the international stage. Halal Money Transfer heavily relies on global cooperation of stakeholders and awareness, since it involves international transactions. We want to work with global financial actors and experts in the implementation of HMT, to grow interest in investment of local Afghan businesses and people. 

Halal Money Transfer is Afghanistan's first online banking and remittance app. While online banking and finance technologies for transactions to be accessible are essential parts of our lives, this is not the case in Afghanistan. Our technology aims to bring these financial capabilities to uplift the communities and businesses, from the urban areas to the rural edges. We believe we can contribute to economic development and financial inclusion.

We believe through these tools, we can empower the underserved. HMT is the bridge that brings Afghan businesses and people together domestically but also with the international market. Remittances reported in literature are found to be both larger, and better distributed, than the total sum of humanitarian aid to Afghanistan. This is one example of the strong social solidarity exhibited by Afghans. Similarly, HMT serves as an innovative solution to allow micro-loans, donations and investment to reach the underprivileged groups in a secure online system.

Another key potential of HMT, is unlocking the ability for online transactions to take place, and thus allowing online services to take place as well. Services such as online retail, ride sharing, food deliveries to also take advantage of.

Currently in Afghanistan, no such financial technology exists. Money is exchanged typically with cash without much security. We are a group of Afghans determined to be able to modernise Afghanistan, with the first steps being one of the most crucial technologies in the global economy. 

HMT is the bridge between many of the key stakeholders in the region and the world. We work independently from the regime and government, empowering communities without the restrictions placed by the regime. The inputs of stakeholders involves, individuals with accounts, local banks, international banks, Afghan diasporas abroad, entrepreneurs. 

Our key activities and output involves the 1) Halal Money Transfer. Our core service revolves around secure and efficient and ethical international money transfers. The outcome allows individuals to be able to engage in secure transactions for the exchange of goods and services, as well as allowing investment from abroad to enter the hands of the people. Businesses would be able to access credit and contribute to the growth of their businesses and livelihoods. 

We provide digital payment services to people especially women in remote areas so they can receive remittance or get paid for their products from anywhere nationally and internationally. We partner with the Afghan diaspora living in Europe and North America to help entrepreneurs and small businesses by providing them with investments and loans in alliance with the ethical finances. 

There are several case studies we can reference that provide evidence of our solution and micro-finance to have an impact. Initiatives like the Afghanistan Rural Enterprise Development Project (AREDP) have established Village Savings and Loan Associations (VSLAs) in rural areas. These VSLAs provide micro-loans to budding entrepreneurs, including women, enabling them to start small businesses.

UNDP and the UN Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) collaborated in 2021 to test the shift from cash to digital transfers in Afghanistan. By encouraging NGOs and small businesses to adopt digital payments, even in remote areas, they facilitated financial inclusion. 

Additionally, we reference the development economics paper “Resisting Social Pressure in the Household Using Mobile Money: Experimental Evidence on Microenterprise Investment in Uganda” by Emma Riley. The paper provides key empirical evidence that microfinance loan disbursement from cash to directly onto a digital account can significantly benefit female microfinance borrowers. We aim to emulate the empowerment of Afghan women, allowing greater household consumption and reduced sharing pressure.

The overall impact is the uplift of the rural communities, growth of domestic Afghan business through financial inclusion.

The technological innovation allows us to track several metrics that will help assess our impact:

• Number of individual/business accounts and proportional to rural areas in Afghanistan

• Number of individual/business accounts opened by females

• Number of individual/business accounts opened by individuals under 25 and under 40

For HMT, we strive to sign our impact goals with the UN Sustainable Development Goals and indicators. With this, several targets were chosen as general targets for Afghanistan, using metrics of the region and provincial level:

• Proportion of informal employment in total employment, by sector and sex

• Average hourly earnings of female and male employees, by occupation, age and persons with disabilities

• Unemployment rate, by sex, age and persons with disabilities

• Proportion of adults (15 years and older) with an account at a bank or other financial institution or with a mobile-money-service provider

These targets cover a wide range of work and economic growth impact from greater job creation, innovation, employment and most crucially for HMT, the capacity of domestic financial institutions to encourage and expand access to banking, insurance and financial services for all.

The key technology of HMT is the use of digital credit cards and e-wallets for money transfer, similar technologies that are prevalent in developed countries and other money transaction initiatives. We aim to provide our api for businesses so they can easily integrate it into their existing solutions. The system is also facilitated with QR code that allows one account to send or receive money efficiently.

2 full time, 

1 contractors, 

4 part time

8 months

The team is made up of passionate Afghans who are determined in empowering their local communities. Our goal is spearheaded by young and experienced individuals, and our goal is to engage with as many young Afghans especially since our interventions involve modernising technologies. Additionally, we work with local women-led businesses in Afghanistan and ensure that we can support their work under the difficulties of the regime in Afghanistan. To do so, we gain feedback from men and women and embed them in the design as well as the eventual dissemination of the technology. Moreover, HMT is open to working with the diverse range of ethnic groups in Afghanistan, for example working in tandem with families and business owners of Pashtuns, Tajiks, Hazaras and more. We strive to foster a secure and collaborative financially inclusive working environment for women and men in Afghanistan and worldwide. 

Our business model is based around charging a fee for the transactions that are facilitated via our platforms. We provide businesses and individuals an easy and accessible way of transferring money using their e-wallet. We allow businesses to implement our apis in their website so they can receive payments from their customers for which we charge them a fee.

Our goal is to charge the minimum amount to cover our costs in order to encourage uptake of the technology in Afghanistan and potentially expand to other developing countries as well. 

HMT is an ambitious mission that is made possible with the commitment and passion from our partners. We have partnered with the Islamic Bank of Afghanistan. The bank has a presence in all of the 365 districts in Afghanistan in order to provide our services to the people.

Our business model is one that is very similar to the existing systems and technologies adopted by Paypal or Western Union for example. By charging a small fee per transaction and working with an exclusive partnership with the Islamic Bank of Afghanistan. With this, we are confident that HMT will be financially sustainable and impactful. 

Traditionally in Afghanistan small money transfer individuals are called Sarafs. They exist who work under difficult conditions such as having the need to physically transfer money. Difficulties with trusting the exchange rate and keeping money safe. We aimed to partner with them and get them partnered with HMT using our agent services. So they can be our agents on the ground facilitating the flow of money to our community of users. 

We are currently working on partnering with the Afghan diaspora in Europe who are often using illegal methods of sending remittances back to Afghanistan due to the lack of infrastructure. Similarly, we have already partnered with existing money senders in order to make the adaptation of our technology easy and seamless. Together, we aim to provide them with resources in order to help them send money easily back home.