It's just a start of Payza's involvement in Bangladesh: CEO

Last week, Alertpay was re-launched as Payza in Bangladesh.
Payza is one of the largest payment platforms in the world for e-commerce, corporate disbursement and remittances.
Alastair Graham, CEO of Payza in an interview with The Daily Star said the rebranding is done because the part 'alert' of the Alertpay was causing confusion among people in some parts of the world.
"As we expanded to different territories, we found that the 'alert' word was causing confusion in some parts of the world and that is obviously not something we want to sustain and we went through rebranding exercise this year and three months ago we re-launched as Payza," he said.
He said they were looking for a name that would give people a feeling that it is about payment.
"We created the name Payza after the word 'pay' as we thought it will be something catchy," Graham said.
With over 9 million members, Payza offers its services in 197 countries and in 21 different currencies.
Praising the government, Graham said the government is doing really good in terms of promoting online business and looking for ways to facilitate getting payment solutions for this sector.
"It is a strong motivator for us to actually get involved in Bangladesh and providing our services. We are very interested in its development and we want to be at the forefront of it," he said.
When asked if Payza faced any challenges coming to Bangladesh, he said there are always challenges and difficulties during expansion of service in new territories.
"There are always challenges and difficulties when you go to new territories. That's the nature what we do as a company and we go through those challenges so that we can give our customer a very smooth payment experience," he said.
Graham said the challenges include finding right partners to do business with. Because Payza needs to work in regulated environment and it needs regulated partners to understand payment procedure of the country and there has to be an agency with customer experience that enables to provide the right services to the right people.
"We've partnered with Bank Asia and Casada Technologies Ltd in order to give us that package in Bangladesh", he said.
Bank Asia is Payza's regulated entity and local banking partner. It leads Payza in terms of how Payza needs to behave in the regulated environment.
Casada Technologies Ltd is local marketing team or commercial entity.
About Payza's newly launched service SimplysendBD, he said, "it will enable NRBs to remit money in Bangladesh and it's a partnership we've done with Casada."
One must signup to Payza first to get this service.
Graham said the new service is giving them the experience and understanding of the market in the country and also the overseas Bangladeshi market.
"This understanding will help us provide right services in a best possible way and we bringing in payment experience in order to deliver that," he said.
Graham said Payza would have a positive impact in Bangladesh's economy.
"As we facilitate the online business providing payment solutions, Bangladeshi people can do business anywhere in the world and get paid for their services bringing money in to the country. This is how it will benefit and affect the economy in a positive way," he said.
Graham said currently it is not possible to shop at eBay or Amazon using the Payza platform. But Payza is working on it.
He also said that at the moment, Payza is offering Bangladeshi people only to receive money from abroad due to regulation of the country.
However, he said, "Payza members can send money from their e-wallet accounts overseas. Also, we are currently developing the means for our members to load endorsed funds into their Payza accounts from here in Bangladesh."
Payza is offering its services across the Bangladeshi through electronic funds transfer network. He said as almost all the banks are in this network it doesn't matter which bank you are with, you will get the service.
"We will extend this coverage in future," he said.
Graham said Payza would enable IT experts to offer their services to anyone anywhere in the world and get paid
for that.
He said Payza doesn't differentiate between emerging markets and established markets.
"The way we approach to the online payment world is that we want to provide the same level of service to emerging markets as we do to the established markets. It's core to our business that we have foot in both camps and we are able to facilitate the transfer of funds from one to other in most convenient and simple way possible," he said.
About Payza's operation in Bangladesh, he said he is very satisfied and excited about it.
"It's just a start of Payza's involvement in Bangladesh," Graham said.