Hawala is business by another name

Hawala is a dirty word. It smacks of black money, sleazy back alleys doing surreptitious transactions in small notes, and dodgy businessmen with fictitious balance sheets. And yet, at the heart of it, hawala is not too different from normal banking. ET helps you join the dots. The big question before anyone in international business is how to receive or send value for the goods and services you have sent or received across countries. How do you convert your assets (rupees) held in India into dollars abroad or vice versa, like NRIs sending money home. Business and people use the banking system to settles these dues. But when regulations bar settlements, they shift underground.

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