There are millions of Indians living abroad who support their families back home. Today, the most efficient and cheapest international money transfers to India are done online. There are dozens of providers on the market for those wondering how to send money to India. One such provider is Instarem, and here we review its pros and cons, explain how to transfer money using Instarem, and share general tips on how to make money transfers to India most efficiently.
What is Instarem?
How does Instarem work?
How to transfer money using Instarem?
Partnerhips
Customer support and satisfaction
What is Instarem?
Instarem is a Singapore-based, international online payment provider founded in 2014. Today, the company serves about a million customers, many of whom send international money transfers to India, and process $6 billion worth of transactions a year, the majority of those being business payments. Available in around 60 destinations, Instarem’s main area of operation remains the Asia-Pacific region. In Europe, it is licensed by the Bank of Lithuania and has offices in Lithuania and the UK.
This article will help you to decide whether Instarem is the best way to send money to India or not.
How does Instarem work?
To send money to India, one needs to register in the Instarem app. Despite advertising its registration process as simple, prospective Instarem users must provide detailed personal information including bank details and proof of identification even if they only plan to be sending small amounts occasionally. The following verification process should take about 24 hours for an account to be created. Even then, users trying to figure out how to transfer money using Instarem complain that the company would demand additional documents for no apparent reason.
If you are based in Europe, then you should know that signing up with a service to send online money transfers to India does not need to be that complicated. It is just how Instarem works. For example, Profee, a fully licensed provider, only asks its clients for the most basic details such as their full name or email address; thanks to this, signup only takes a couple of minutes.
How to transfer money using Instarem?
Instarem employs traditional bank-to-bank transfers because of their security. Still, there are other payment options available on the market, such as card-to-card transfers. For online money transfers to India, Profee offers transfers from bank cards or Apple/Google Pay because they are faster, cheaper, and still secure.
So, how does Instarem work for money transfers to India? First, you need to deposit money to its wallet. Unfortunately, there are cases when Instarem would suspend accounts and users were unable to access the money in the wallet. With card-to-card transfers via Profee, you do not need to make such a deposit but instead send the money directly between cards.
Options for depositing funds to an Instarem wallet for money transfers to India vary depending on the sender’s country and the currency and may include:
- Bank transfer;
- SWIFT transfer in USD;
- Direct bank payment in Australia (via the POLi system).
Note that Instarem does not accept deposits from third parties, which means that only you can add funds to make international money transfers to India and elsewhere.
The company promises same-day (or up to 36 hours) delivery for most of the transfers in the Asia-Pacific region, such as online money transfers to India, and 2-3 days for other transfers. Nevertheless, Instarem users often complain about unexplained delays, so it might not be the best choice in an emergency.
Instarem deposits all transfers directly to the recipient’s bank account in local currency, so the recipient can withdraw cash as they would usually do with any other money in their account. There is no option for cash pickup.
The fees for online money transfers to India via Instarem are claimed to be transparent and made known before the transfer is sent. Instarem reportedly applies mid-market currency exchange rates, which means it does not add its own margin on currency conversion. In addition, it charges a flexible fee of 0.25-0.5% on money transfers to India meaning that the greater amounts you send, the higher the fees are. There are caveats, however. For example, there is a minimum transfer amount set at $50, or unexpected extra fees enabled when certain transaction limits have been reached.
If you send money via Profee, you always know the precise amount your recipient gets and benefit from one of the best exchange rates on the market thanks to Profee’s unique monitoring system.
Partnerhips
Instarem runs a referral programme, as many other market players do. It is, however, mostly focused on opinion leaders such as bloggers, comparison sites, influencers, and such. This does help the service spread the word, but in a more commercial-based rather than organic manner. The participants are rewarded for successful signups through their referral; the referee’s first transfer also brings the referrer a bonus, so keep this in mind next time you stumble upon an excited blog post on how to transfer money using Instarem.
In comparison, for Profee all its clients can be its ambassadors if they want to (and they do, because people love the service!) Each Profee account has a special referral link which enables awards not only to the account holder but also to the people they invite: once the referee sends their first transfer, they get €5 and their referrer gets €10!
Customer support and satisfaction
Instarem claims to have a robust client service available 24/7 by phone and online. At the same time, many of those who explored how to transfer money using Instarem say they have been unable to communicate with the customer support effectively (or at all).
According to Trustpilot, the largest European user review platform, Instarem has replied to 70% of negative reviews. In comparison, Profee has successfully dealt with 99% of such. Overall, Instarem holds a ‘Great’, 4 out of 5 rating on Trustpilot, with 69% of users awarding it five stars. For Profee the numbers show a much higher level of client satisfaction: the ‘Excellent’ rating of 4.4/5 and over 81% of customers considering it a five-star service.
Now that you have an idea of what Instarem is and how it works, you might want to look at some alternatives. But you can save much time on the research if you opt for Profee because this is the fastest, cheapest, and the most effective service for those looking how to send money to India. Visit Profee or get the app from Google Play or the Apple Store to enjoy all the benefits of the Profee ecosystem.
