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The purpose of this paper is to study underground banking between Greece and Albania and provide policy makers with specific policy recommendations to reduce hawala, reduce remittances commissions and improve access of banking services to both remittance senders in Greece and beneficiaries in Albania.

The authors measure loans to customers (non‐banks), total assets and net revenues from commissions, including remittances commissions, of a sample of 26 Greek commercial banks during 1996‐2004 and examine recent remittances commissions of the four largest Greek commercial banks and the Greek Postal Office.

Results indicate that Greek commercial banks charge less for remittances services than Western Union, Eurogiro and hawala banking, although remittances are not a core business for them (loans to customers – non‐banks – are their core business).

Practical solutions are: lowering remittances commissions to Greek Postal Office for low amount remittances; raising awareness of migrants on benefits of access to formal banking system; implementing bilateral initiatives between Greece and Albania; facilitating development of transfer mechanisms for remittances; promoting economic activities; increasing transparency and offering insurance for remittances; and make it compulsory for employers to pay legal and documented Albanian workers through migrant bank accounts. Also, Albania could support the growth of ATMs networks, to increase access of people to more areas even to rural areas, where remittance‐recipient households receive most of remittances. On the other hand, Albania, could find alternative sources to finance current account deficits, due to a possible future reduction of remittances inflows.

The paper presents an explanation about low access of Albanian migrants in Greece to remittances services offered by the banking system and suggests the implementation of specific policies to banks and alternative formal money remittance service providers.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the recommendations of an influential international advisory body, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), towards regulation of Alternative Remittance Systems (ARSs).

The research design is a comparative analysis of Afghanistan and the United Arab Emirates, using available FATF documentation and external sources.

The analysis shows that FATF is right in pointing out that ARSs are useful vehicles for criminals to move operational expenses and launder the proceeds of their crimes. However, based on the cases of Afghanistan and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), it is argued that FATF's main approach of seeking to integrate these informal, traditional systems into the sphere and regulations of the formal banking system can be ineffective and even counterproductive in developing countries. Rather than taking a genuinely risk‐based approach, all ARS operators are required to be registered or licensed, conduct Customer Due Diligence (CDD) and fill out Suspicious Transaction Reports (STRs), just like commercial banks.

The impact of mandatory registration and requiring CDD and STRs has been negligible in Afghanistan and the UAE. Therefore, the article calls for new approaches to control money laundering in ARSs.

The paper is the first independent, comparative case study analysis of FATF regulations and implementation. It illustrates the limited knowledge/research in the field, and the inherent limitations of the current regulatory approach.

The purpose of this paper is to examine Myanmar’s “hundi” system, an informal value transfer system used widely by local Myanmar citizens and offshore migrant workers to remit money domestically and internationally. Due to historically stringent banking and foreign exchange controls and a lack of domestic and internationally linked financial services, the system grew to become the dominant medium for remittances in Myanmar. It also remains unregulated despite authorities acknowledging its use in criminal and terrorist activity. However, with an expanding and modernising financial sector, there is now increasing competition and challenges facing Myanmar’s hundi system.

This paper draws on available literature and open source reporting, as well as interviews with former Myanmar Police Force officials.

This study provides a unique insight into Myanmar’s hundi system, its history and the challenges it faces. The once dominant system remains a known anti-money laundering and countering the financing of terrorism (AML/CFT) risk and is having to compete with an expanding and modernising formal banking sector and the introduction of fintech and mobile money services. In the short term, these are unlikely to eliminate the hundi system completely, but may instead push hundi operators towards adopting these networks and technologies in their own operations.

Myanmar remains a very under-researched area and there has been a limited focus on its informal hundi remittance system and related AML/CFT issues. This paper will be a useful source for academics, development professionals, policymakers, law enforcement agencies and private sector actors seeking to understand Myanmar’s informal remittance system.

Analyses the alternative and informal remittance systems that characterise many Asian transactions; they are also known as informal value transfer systems, underground banking systems and so on: unlike money laundering, they are not based on deception and may indeed be licensed. Traces the origins of these systems, which are of two main types: the Chinese fei chi’en system and the Indian hawala/hundi system. Describes the two systems, and goes on to the reasons for their growing popularity: the increased migration of Asian populations to the rest of the world, the systems’ perceived efficiency, timeliness, cost effectiveness and lack of bureaucracy, the remoteness from banks of some areas, the desire of the Chinese to conceal wealth, and insufficient supply of foreign exchange in some countries.

The purpose of this research paper is to consider the unique and even positive nature of hawalas and other informal fund transfer systems (IFTs) in the developing world.

Reviewing primary and secondary reports from national regulators, international organizations, and academics, the paper questions the conventional view that IFTs should be subject to extensive regulation and scrutiny because they have been abused by some participants. Many positive characteristics of hawalas – speed, transaction cost, cultural convenience, and versatility – also contribute to their abuse. The paper examines the modern uses of hawalas, including legitimate – remittances from migrant workers, humanitarian and emergency aid, personal investments – and illegitimate – money laundering, terrorist financing, tax and customs evasion, circumventing exchange controls – applications. The paper then discusses legal issues involving IFTs in developing and developed countries, discussing factors the international community should consider when designing regulatory systems. The paper reviews developing world IFT regulation in the UAE, Afghanistan, Somalia, the Eastern and South African Anti‐Money Laundering Group, and Columbia, and developed world regulation in The Netherlands, the UK, and the USA.

The paper concludes that IFTs are robust in jurisdictions where formal banking systems are absent or weak, or where structural obstacles distort foreign exchange and other financial markets.

Looking forward, the paper considers, inter alia, licensing or registration requirements and the rationale for choosing one over the other, and the need for competent authority due diligence on IFT operators.

Remittances in the former Soviet Union have increased rapidly over the past decade. In some countries of the former Soviet Union, remittances have reached staggering levels. For example, in Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan remittances now account for over 10% of GDP, with Tajikistan leading the pack with annual remittances of approximately 40% of GDP. Remittances in this group of economies now exceed foreign direct investment and foreign assistance. Because this rapid rise in remittances is a relatively recent trend and obtaining reliable data is difficult, this area of research has been underexplored.

The aim of this paper is to provide a comprehensive review of existing remittance measurement methodologies. Moreover, we propose practical methods to adjust the Central Bank of Russia data to derive more accurate remittances estimates in selected countries of the former Soviet Union. These selected economies are major recipients of remittances among transition economies and account for as much as 10% of remittances worldwide. There have been attempts to provide this type of estimation in individual countries; however, there have been no studies, to our knowledge, that propose a general methodology for the region.

This study aims to convey the understanding of the ecosystem – how “hundi” works on the border trade between Myanmar and northern Thailand, which is an informal transfer system and is widely used as an alternative banking system. Even though the role of hundi is unable to declare the sources of money under the standard settlement of formal banking system, a failure to operate of its official mechanism are carrying using hundi, as a financial platform across the border between Thailand and Myanmar. This study surveys the best practice mechanism for the regional and international cooperation.

This paper draws on relevant literature, open-source reporting, and interviews with more than 30 interviewees on the border between Thailand and Myanmar. Interviewees includes border-trader, money changer, money transfer operators, business leaders, hundi operators, immigrant labors, government officials and commercial banking staffs.

This study provides a unique insight of hundi system, which work as the alternative mode of formal banking. It is an informal fund transfer payment platform used on the border between Thailand and Myanmar in the past five decades. It insists that hundi plays a significant role in both substitution and complementary on the trade and payment across the border of Myanmar–Thailand. Even though confronting with the barriers of financing of terrorism (anti money laundering AML/combating the financing of terrorism CFT) risk, the competition with the expanding and modernizing formal banking sector, and the introduction of Fintech and mobile money services. In the short term, these are unlikely to eliminate the hundi system completely, but may instead push hundi operators towards adopting these networks and technologies in their own operations.

This paper will be a useful source for academics, development professionals, policymakers, law enforcement agencies and business actors who are seeking to understand Myanmar’s informal payment system, hundi.

This is the latest work for border trade payment or trade financing role of hundi which has hidden under the informal market of the border for several decades. It has few research of hundi on border trade and payment, particularly after the military coup in 2021 which made hundi return to be on the spotlight and simultaneous mechanism of border trade and payment ecosystem of Myanmar. This paper will be a useful source for academics, development professionals, policymakers, law enforcement agencies and business actors who are eager to understand Myanmar’s informal payment system, hundi, especially during the hardship.

This paper aims to provide an insight into anti-money laundering (AML) regulations in light of the global AML framework. Specific analysis is drawn using a case study of Bangladesh – the national financial culture within the country is carefully examined to establish the extent to which it is conducive to adopting such frameworks. Particular focus is placed on customer due diligence requirements, and the unique challenges posed by alternative remittance systems. The paper evaluates the impact of globalisation as well as the correlation between developments based on resources available to the respective state.

The research has primarily been conducted through the usage of relevant websites (reports compiled by national and international agencies) and journal articles in electronic format. References have been made to studies and works carried out by authors on the global AML framework.

The internal structural development of Bangladesh must be enhanced and the various social and economic issues must be overcome before a practical AML framework can be successfully implemented.

The lack of published works on AML in Bangladesh is a shortcoming, and more work on this subject is encouraged. The absence of specific AML reports on Bangladesh has resulted in some informed assumptions based on other developing countries.

The research provides a deep insight into the global AML framework, how it can be applied to developing countries like Bangladesh and the drawbacks of implementing a universal framework domestically.

The study provides an innovative analysis, examining aspects of AML regulation in Bangladesh which have not previously been effectively studied.

Most people in Western countries are more likely to associate the term underground banking with an automatic teller machine in a subway station, than with complex infrastructures of financial remittance that may be utilised either to by‐pass completely conventional banking facilities and processes, or else to connect with those same conventional banking facilities and processes only at selected points, at selected times and selected places. However, the low public profile of underground banking is in contrast to the increasingly high priority that governments, financial regulators and law enforcement agencies are giving to efforts to counter the facilitative role that underground banking can play in the activities of money launderers, organised crime, terrorist groups and tax evaders. Underground banking systems are playing an increasingly important role in the burgeoning tide of laundered money that is projected by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to be equivalent to 2–5 per cent of global GDP with organised crime groups estimated to be grossing more than US$1.5trn a year. However, there is significant variation regarding guesstimates of the scale of the activities of organised crime and money laundering in general. For example, Walker applies a ‘crime‐economic model’ upon data collated from international databases and his model estimates a global money laundering total of $2.85trn per year, with these flows heavily concentrated in North America and Europe. These types of disparity in assessment are inevitable until a great deal more data is generated regarding money laundering and other sectors of alternative and/or illegal economies. Walker stresses that his results are very much interim, but they suggest some interesting patterns. For example: of totals of money laundered globally, the USA was the origin of more than 46 per cent and the destination of more than 18 per cent; and on a matrix of attractiveness of jurisdictions to money launderers Luxembourg ranked first with a score of 686, followed by the USA (634) and Switzerland (617), with the traditional homes of underground banking systems such as Pakistan (Hawala system) and China (Fei Chien) ranking in the lowest category (0–9). The methodological problems of measurement are especially acute regarding underground banking systems due to their intrinsically low levels of public visibility. Indeed, many of the dilemmas associated with underground banking are reproduced in other issues of conventional banking, financial regulation, law enforcement and economic governance. It is these dilemmas that are the core focus of this paper.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how institutional mechanisms operate within both formal and informal channels of cross-border remittance.

Face-to-face interviews were conducted with Myanmar migrants mostly working in Thailand. Thematic coding was used to analyze field notes and identify themes in channel member perceptions and institutional environmental process.

Informal money transfer channels have achieved higher levels of legitimacy when compared to formal channels. Channel legitimacy is a more important attribute than efficiency. Lack of financial infrastructure, such as bank branches and ATM machines particularly in rural or outlying areas of Myanmar, the requirements for formal documentation and language and communication are the major institutional constraints that encourage the development and use of multiple channels in Myanmar. Formal money transfer channels develop with stronger regulative institutional processes, whereas informal money transfer channels develop with stronger cultural-cognitive and normative institutional processes.

Using convenience sample of remitters mainly from one area of Thailand and other channel members from Yangon, the financial capital of Myanmar, may limit the applicability of the findings, which calls for future research.

Banks and money transfer offices need to improve legitimacy perception within migrant communities by building stronger networks with local banks and international banks. They could provide Myanmar speaking front-line service personnel and include brochures in the Myanmar language to improve the communication process. The findings and recommendations from this study are also applicable to informal channels and formal financial institutions in other ASEAN countries that are preparing to make investments in Myanmar. Moreover, Myanmar banks should also consider opening branches to cater for Myanmar workers in ASEAN, especially in Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia.

This paper applies institutional theory within channels, investigates the context of a financial channel rather than a product channel, addresses the importance of institutional environmental mechanisms and constraints in influencing channel behavior and is embedded in the situational context of Myanmar, a newly opened South-East Asian economy where little prior research has been conducted.