Digital wallets have moved from a payments curiosity to the primary money-holding instrument for tens of millions of customers across Africa, India and the GCC — often before they ever opened a bank account. Redian builds the regulated wallet platform that sits underneath: closed-loop, open-loop, multi-currency, telco-grade. This page is for banks launching their own wallet, e-money issuers building a standalone PPI / wallet brand, telcos extending their mobile-money rails, and retailers / employers issuing closed-loop wallets to their customers and staff.
What it does
The platform issues, funds, holds, transfers and redeems balances across wallet accounts that the operator's regulator recognises — RBI PPI in India, CBK e-money in Kenya, CBN under Nigeria's mobile-money guidelines, the Central Bank of the UAE for stored-value facilities and equivalents elsewhere. Customers onboard with eKYC, fund the wallet from a bank, card or mobile money source, send money to other wallet holders or back to a bank, pay at merchants by QR or NFC, settle bills, top up airtime and earn cashback or rewards where the operator configures them.
The platform handles both closed-loop wallets (only usable inside the operator's ecosystem — for example an employer wage wallet, a retailer gift wallet or a transit pass) and open-loop wallets (usable for any merchant payment under the wallet's regulator licence). Both run on the same engine; the regulator and product configuration decide which behaviour is enabled.
Where it fits
We deploy this for four buyer profiles:
- Banks and NBFCs launching a wallet brand alongside their core banking estate — typically to capture younger customers, on-board the unbanked or run a payroll product without opening a CASA account for every employee.
- E-money issuers and PPI licence-holders running a standalone wallet brand, often with cross-border remittance, multi-currency and a merchant-acceptance play.
- Telcos and MMOs extending mobile-money rails into a richer wallet (savings, lending, merchant payments, cross-border) — often with banking-as-a-service integration into a sponsor bank.
- Retailers, transit operators and employers issuing closed-loop wallets to customers, commuters or staff for loyalty, fare collection or wage disbursement.
The platform pairs naturally with the rest of the Redian banking stack: core banking, agency banking, digital channels, AML screening and the eKYC platform.
Core modules
Customer onboarding and KYC. Tiered KYC — minimum-KYC for low-value wallets, full-KYC for unlimited wallets — with biometric capture, document OCR, liveness checks, sanctions and PEP screening, and national-ID integration where the rails exist (Aadhaar eKYC in India, IPRS in Kenya, BVN in Nigeria, Emirates ID in UAE).
Wallet ledger and accounting. Multi-currency, multi-tier wallet accounts with full double-entry ledger, escrow / trust-account handling per regulator, configurable transaction limits per wallet tier, and a tamper-evident audit trail for every credit and debit.
Funding rails. Top-up from bank account (NEFT / IMPS / UPI in India, M-Pesa / Airtel Money / MTN MoMo across Africa, EFT / RTGS in the GCC), debit / credit card via tokenised PSP integration, agent cash-in via the agency banking network, and cross-border inward remittance.
P2P and merchant payments. Wallet-to-wallet transfers, wallet-to-bank pull-out, merchant QR pay (BharatQR, EMVCo, M-Pesa Till, M-Pesa Paybill), NFC contactless at supported merchants, virtual card issuance (RuPay, Visa, Mastercard) for use at non-wallet merchants.
Bill payments and value-added services. Utility, airtime, DTH, education and government bill payments through pre-integrated aggregators (BBPS in India, Pesalink in Kenya, NIBSS in Nigeria). Cashback, rewards and merchant offer engine.
Cross-border remittance. Multi-currency wallet accounts, FX pricing engine, corridor pricing per remittance partner, AML and sanctions screening on every cross-border leg, regulator reporting in receiving country format.
Compliance and risk. Real-time AML screening per transaction, velocity rules per wallet tier and customer segment, device binding and behavioural fraud scoring, and regulator reporting templates for RBI PPI, CBK e-money, CBN, BoT, BCEAO and CBUAE.
Regulator coverage
Reporting and audit templates are aligned to RBI PPI guidelines (India), CBK e-money regulations (Kenya), CBN mobile-money and e-money guidelines (Nigeria), BoT regulations (Tanzania), BCEAO and BEAC e-money guidelines (Francophone Africa), the Central Bank of the UAE Stored Value Facilities Regulation and the FCA Electronic Money Regulations (UK). Audit trails are immutable and timestamped, supporting both internal audit and supervisory inspections. Data residency options let operators keep PII inside the country of operation in line with each market's data protection law.
Integration with the wider stack
The wallet exposes REST and event APIs and ships with pre-built connectors for:
- Core banking — Temenos T24, Finacle, Flexcube, Navision SACCO, Sacco Solutions, in-house cores
- Mobile money — Safaricom Daraja, Airtel Money, MTN MoMo, Tigo Pesa, M-Pesa Tanzania
- Card networks and PSPs — Visa, Mastercard, RuPay, AmEx; PSPs in scope per market
- AML & KYC — eKYC platform, Hyperverge, Onfido, Aadhaar eKYC, BVN, IPRS
- Bill aggregators — BBPS, Pesalink, NIBSS, BillDesk, IndiaIdeas
- Cross-border — major remittance partners (TransferWise, Western Union, MoneyGram, regional aggregators)
Why Redian
Wallet platforms are unforgiving — a settlement bug on the 1st of the month means employees on a wage wallet cannot draw their salary, and the operator's brand collapses overnight. Redian engineers wallet stacks with the operational rigour the regulator and the operations team both demand: paired-environment deployments, blue/green release for terminal and merchant estates, store-and-forward in low-connectivity catchments, and 24x7 NOC support across our Nairobi, Noida and Dubai hubs.
We have shipped wallet, core banking, agency and digital channel work for banks, telcos and e-money issuers across India and Sub-Saharan Africa since 2016 — see the broader BFSI practice and the Cameroon core banking rollout. Our engineers know the regulator-facing reporting (RBI, CBK, CBN, BoT, BCEAO, BEAC, CBUAE) and the local payment rails (Pesalink, NIBSS, NPCI, M-Pesa, Airtel Money) that make or break a wallet go-live.
Where you need to extend the bench, our staff augmentation and GCC models put Redian engineers alongside your in-house team under your governance.
Working with Redian
Most wallet programmes we take on are 14–18 weeks to first live wallet and 6–8 months to full rollout, depending on regulator certification, KYC partner integration and PSP / mobile-money certification timelines. We will scope yours against your existing core or telco rails, your regulator's specific wallet guidelines and the funding and acceptance rails your customers actually use.
Talk to our BFSI team about your wallet plan, or browse our BFSI case studies for comparable rollouts.
