hawalla

H4A1W4A1L1L1A1

A form of hawala — A long-established informal system of money transfer from South Asia and the Middle East, still in use by migrant workers.

Scrabble 13

Meanings

nounhawalla (countable and uncountable, plural hawallas)

plural hawallas

  1. alternativecountableuncountableAlternative form of hawala.

    Informal remittances in turn can also be stimulated by resorting to hawalla or other informal institutions during a disaster aftermath (Harvey 2007).

    2013 May 2, J.M. Albala-Bertrand, Disasters and the Networked Economy, Routledge, →ISBN, page 66
    4 more examples

    In view of the provisions of the Payment of Wages Act, the question as to whether “hawalla payments” arranged by mill agents to their operatives going on leave should continue to be made since interest on such payments is no longer permissible, was considered by the Labour and Technical Advisory […]

    1937, Millowners' Association (Bombay), Report, G. Claridge and Co., →OCLC, page 36

    It is much more difficult when you are dealing with underground banking systems, hawalla systems, et cetera, when expatriate workers are trying to transfer money back home and there are no records or very little records to speak of.

    2004 March 18, US Congress, U.S. and Foreign Efforts to Recover Iraq's Stolen Money (108–72), →ISBN, page 16

    Twenty-seven-year-old Abdul Salaam, his 50-year-old brother Haji Osman Khan and his 19-year-old cousin Noor Aslam ran a hawalla (a money exchange/forwarding business) with branches in Pakistan and the UAE.

    2007 October 20, Andy Worthington, The Guantanamo Files, Pluto Press, →ISBN, page 180

    Where remittances from/to individuals abroad represent a significant share of FX inflows, an overvalued official exchange rate will tend to motivate some people to use informal channels for remittances—whether the use of cash, or other channels such as hawalla—and this can lead to a widening of the spread between the official and parallel markets.

    2021 February 5, Mr.Simon T Gray, Recognizing Reality, International Monetary Fund, →ISBN, page 10

Rhymes & wordplay

Anagrams

Cite this entry
APA

hawalla. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/hawalla

MLA

“hawalla.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/hawalla. Accessed November 4, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “hawalla,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/hawalla.

Source: hawalla on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.