Every year millions of people travel to Saudi Arabia for the Hajj and Umrah pilgrimage. One challenge they encounter as they embark on the holy pilgrimage is the need to carry the local currency, Saudi riyals. This often leads pilgrims to purchase riyals through unofficial channels at inflated rates or exchange their currency, resulting in additional costs and potential legal issues if they exceed cash limits at airports.
Recognising these obstacles, UmrahCash, a FinTech firm founded by William Phelps aims to solve these challenges, especially for pilgrims travelling from countries in West Africa and South Asia.
“There are really three main ways in many developing countries to actually access riyals, either you use networks which are unregulated and no guarantee of success, you carry large amounts of physical cash which gets you into legal issues or alternatively, you buy Saudi riyals in your home country for a hugely inflated price,” says Mr Phelps.
“What this does is, not only put pilgrims at risk, but also often double or triples the cost of the journey in the first place.”
The new app developed by the company is simplifying “pilgrimage finance” and providing “easy access to Saudi riyals” through technology eliminating the “black and grey markets, giving a transparent paper trail for the actual exchange process from home country to Saudi Arabia”.
Customers have to download the UmrahCash app on their phones and deposit money in their home currency by bank transfer using the virtual wallet. Once the travellers reach Saudi Arabia, they can approach one of the company’s agents based in Jeddah, Makkah or Madinah to receive the cash.
UmrahCash is currently active in Nigeria and is being run on a pilot basis in Niger. It aims to expand to countries in South and South-east Asia including India, Pakistan and Bangladesh by the end of the year as it expects demand for such services in those countries.
“What we've done basically is to digitise as much as we can in line with local regulations but at the same time, allow pilgrims to feel comfortable because they're still handling the cash as they are used to doing it.”
Mr Phelps, a UK citizen, worked in Saudi Arabia and Nigeria before launching the company. After graduating from Cambridge University in 2020, he worked as an equity derivatives broker in London for a year before moving to Lagos in Nigeria to work as an investment manager for Adaverse, a Web3 venture-focused fund for two years.
During his time in Africa, he managed more than 50 investments across 10 different African countries as part of his job.
He later moved to Riyadh to work for the same fund and oversaw the setting up of an accelerator programme to support tech-enabled companies in the kingdom.
While he was working in the kingdom, he decided to launch his own firm after noticing a “significant gap in the market, but there was also a very tangible pain point”, to address.
Any traveller going to Saudi Arabia can also use the app to obtain riyals but the company is targeting Hajj and Umrah pilgrims.
“UmrahCash in my view, is not just a commercial opportunity or a business. It’s an enterprise that actually adds tangible value to the experience of pilgrims and visitors to the kingdom.”
The positive investment climate in Saudi Arabia, the Arab world’s largest economy, also motivated him to launch the company.
“The Saudi market in general is incredibly dynamic. It's open for business and has really excellent government support from the top down. So what that means is that to start a company or start a business … is extremely well supported.”
Saudi Arabia is focusing on diversifying its economy away from oil and is encouraging more companies to operate in the kingdom as part of the Vision 2030 programme. It has brought in several reforms and simplified investment laws to attract more foreign direct investment into the kingdom.
Saudi Arabia hosted a combined 60 million international and domestic tourists in the first six months of the year, who spent 143 billion Saudi riyals ($38.1 billion) in the country, according to the Ministry of Tourism.
The Saudi government “is doing excellent work to encourage both local and foreign entrepreneurship, make it easier to establish companies and running a number of programmes, accelerators, incubators, etc, to enable local entrepreneurs to better scale and develop products for the Saudi market”.
UmrahCash, which has offices in Jeddah and Nigeria has recently secured $500,000 worth of investment from Adaverse, a Saudi-based venture fund and plans to raise more money by the end of the year as it looks to scale up its operations and expand in different countries.
“We see the bulk of opportunity in South and Southeast Asia, so we would look at not only developing infrastructure there, incorporating companies but actually pushing the products into markets with similar issues.”
The company has processed $1 million worth of transactions since its establishment this year, he says.
Q&A with William Phelps, founder, UmrahCash:
What new skills have you learnt in the process of starting this company?
I wouldn't describe it as a new skill but one thing that I think is very important to consider with respect to UmrahCash is the sensitivity of the market in which it operates. It's not only a FinTech company that processes cross-border payments, but it's also a fundamental service provider within Hajj and Umrah. So really, what we've been very careful to do and what I've spent a lot of time doing is regulatory and stakeholder alignment. I think in comparison to other projects I've worked on, or maybe other sectors, I've looked at, what I've really had to focus on is slow and steady growth, so developing in a way which is meaningful and purposeful and ensuring that execution is extremely precise.
What is your advice to budding entrepreneurs?
I would say that in Saudi Arabia, in particular, now is a better time than ever to do so. It's incredibly dynamic with a lot of opportunities ... there's a huge amount of resources in both the public and private sectors to take advantage of. If you are a resident or a Saudi citizen, I would encourage you to take a plunge and take advantage of everything which is currently in the market and available to you. But as the adage goes, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, so you have to be in it to win it.
Where do you see yourself in five years?
I would hope to make further contributions to tangible pain points, whether in FinTech or outside of it, but hopefully by that point, UmrahCash and its related infrastructure to something more tangible and a corporate entity.
What successful start-ups do you wish you had started?
I'm a great believer in the fact that start-ups and any company really should solve tangible pain points. So to a certain extent, I'm happy to be working in the market that I am, simply for the reason that, as mentioned, it's a really tangible issue that we're solving with quite a tangible solution. I would say, there aren't many start-ups, I wish I'd started but what I can say is I wish I started this earlier but I am glad to be where I am now.
Are you a risk taker or a cautious entrepreneur?
I would say I have a healthy risk appetite, but I think within any company, there does need to be a good measure of risk aversion. I am always very keen when building teams or working with, for example, co-founders or colleagues to ensure that I have a good mixture of both those … more dynamic in the face of risk and those who are more grounded and risk-averse. I would probably put myself more in the camp of being risk-averse and cautious but I don't think it's possible to grow a business without some degree of dynamism.
What is your mantra for success?
I probably can't summarise it too punctually, but sort of taking the plunge and being a first mover. I think that the best businesses and the best opportunities are those that exist in previously unexplored spaces … looking at markets and sectors and verticals critically and entering them from an unexplored angle in my view is always a recipe, maybe not necessarily for great success, but certainly for interesting outcomes.
Who is your role model?
Lee Kuan Yew, former Prime Minister of Singapore and my second choice is Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. I admire their work in simultaneously modernising but also preserving their societies and their systems and their nations. And it's an approach which I take really to heart when building companies and looking at start-ups, which is the extent to which you can, on the one hand, revolutionise but on the other hand, work within existing patterns of user behaviour and what sort of (things) customers are comfortable with. Having that kind of synergy between modernisation on the one hand and preservation on the other is something which to me is really admirable and I think a great recipe for success.
Company Profile:
Company Name: UmrahCash
Founder: William Phelps
Sector: FinTech
Date Started: 2024
Based in: Jeddah in Saudi Arabia and Kano in Nigeria
Number of Staff: 10
Investment Amount Raised So Far: $500,000
