How a Remittance Provider in Israel Digitized Operations and Scaled Cross-Border Transfers

ICT was heavily dependent on manual processes for handling remittance transactions, which created multiple operational bottlenecks:

• Limited scalability for growing transaction volumes
• High risk of reconciliation errors
• Lack of real-time transaction visibility
• Slower processing cycles
• Increased operational overhead

This made it difficult to expand efficiently or maintain consistency across transactions.

ICT’s remittance model involved a non-direct currency conversion structure, introducing significant technical complexity:

• Sender initiates payment in ILS (Israeli Shekel)
• Settlement occurs in USD via partner networks
• Beneficiary receives funds in local destination currency

This required:

• ILS → USD conversion (defined by ICT)
• USD → Destination currency (defined by disbursement partner)
• Real-time derived FX calculation
• Margin management across both layers
• Transparent rate presentation to users

Managing multiple FX sources dynamically while maintaining accuracy and profitability was a major challenge.

Unlike traditional remittance systems, ICT operated on a non-prefund model:

• Agents collect funds from customers first
• Funds are settled with ICT later
• No upfront wallet prefunding

This introduced critical operational requirements:

• Agent-level cash collection tracking
• Settlement monitoring and reconciliation
• Liability and exposure management
• Risk control mechanisms
• Real-time visibility into outstanding balances

Without a proper system, this model carried significant financial and operational risks.

To enable international transfers, ICT needed to connect with multiple disbursement partners across different countries.

Key challenges included:

• Managing multiple APIs with different standards
• Ensuring consistent transaction handling
• Handling failures and fallback scenarios
• Aligning reconciliation across systems