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  • March 2022 (Revised May 2022)
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Reclaiming the Land of Purple: Purpl’s Mission to Unlock Finance in Lebanon

By: Lauren Cohen and Grace Headinger
  • Format:Print
  • | Language:English
  • | Pages:18
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Abstract

Karl Naim, Co-Founder and CEO of Purpl, embarked on a venture to lower remittance costs for his native Lebanon. Since October 2019, the Lebanese economy had entered a free fall as its banking sector collapsed and large swathes of its population were plunged into poverty. As a repeat technology entrepreneur, Naim alongside his two co-founders decided to launch a new remittance aggregator to improve access to low-cost remittances, which acted as a lifeline for most local families. By becoming a fiat-to-fiat aggregator and eventually leveraging stablecoin technology, he expected that in the first phase he could cut remittance fees in half from 9–12% to 5–6%—and eventually up to 1%. With the Lebanese population's trust in financial and banking institutions shattered, could Purpl succeed in its mission? How could it convince its potential users, the broader Lebanese public and the 20 million-strong Lebanese diaspora around the world, to adopt a different way of sending and transacting with digital cash? For primary remittance users, who only needed to reliably receive a monthly $100–$200 for basic goods and other necessities, could Purpl convince them both to change their habits and to trust the financial system that had put them in this situation in the first place? Moreover, given Purpl's ultimate goal to upend the current establishment, would its "playing nice" with current established institutions haunt the firm's "anti-establishment" credibility from ever materializing?

Keywords

Business Startup; Fintech; Inflation; Deflation; Cross-border Frictions; Remittances; Business Startups; Diasporas; Financial Crisis; Money; Entrepreneurship; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues; Poverty; Financial Institutions; Banking Industry; Financial Services Industry; Technology Industry; Lebanon

Citation

Cohen, Lauren, and Grace Headinger. "Reclaiming the Land of Purple: Purpl’s Mission to Unlock Finance in Lebanon." Harvard Business School Case 222-078, March 2022. (Revised May 2022.)
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About The Author

Lauren H. Cohen

Finance
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Related Work

    • March 2022 (Revised May 2022)
    • Faculty Research

    Reclaiming the Land of Purple: Purpl’s Mission to Unlock Finance in Lebanon

    By: Lauren Cohen and Grace Headinger
Related Work
  • Reclaiming the Land of Purple: Purpl’s Mission to Unlock Finance in Lebanon By: Lauren Cohen and Grace Headinger
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