Local terms for this counter
exchange house · money exchange · döviz bürosu · sarrafa · hawala counter
The exchange house is the Middle East's defining retail financial counter — a licensed, regulated, high-volume storefront that converts currency and sends remittance for millions of migrant workers. No format in the world is closer to what this program is.
$500.00
Counter order · Middle East
Gulf economies run on a migrant workforce that sends a very large share of its earnings home, and the exchange house exists to serve them: licensed, supervised, high-street, staffed and busy. It is the most institutionalised version of the counter model anywhere in the world.
Those businesses already carry identification requirements, transaction monitoring and regulatory reporting. Adding a digital asset to that counter is a smaller operational change than in almost any other market on earth.
Anytime Capital's retail counter is live in the United States. International partner locations are onboarded market by market as local licensing allows, so the first conversation is always about what is possible where your store actually is.
The local picture
The format has a different name in every market and does the same job in all of them. This is the version that applies here.
exchange house · money exchange · döviz bürosu · sarrafa · hawala counter
Exchange houses, money transfer counters, currency exchange offices, neighbourhood grocers in labour-camp districts.
India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Philippines, Egypt, Nepal, Sri Lanka — where the money moves, and why stablecoins matter at this counter.
Arabic, English, Hindi, Urdu, Turkish, Malayalam. Serving a customer in their own language is the single biggest advantage a counter has over an app.
The arithmetic
Crypto is priced as a percentage of the order, so the revenue scales with the ticket rather than with the number of items you sold. These are worked examples at an illustrative 1% to 3% revenue share — check your agent agreement for your own rate.
| At the counter | Order size | Store keeps (low) | Store keeps (high) |
|---|---|---|---|
| A customer cashes a check and puts part of it into Bitcoin | $200 | $2.00 | $6.00 |
| A regular buys USDT to send to family overseas | $500 | $5.00 | $15.00 |
| A customer sells crypto and takes the cash | $1,000 | $10.00 | $30.00 |
| A small business owner buys on payday, every other week | $2,500 | $25.00 | $75.00 |
| One larger order, the kind an ATM's daily cap refuses | $10,000 | $100.00 | $300.00 |
The figures above are worked examples, not projected or guaranteed earnings. They show how the arithmetic works on a given order size at an illustrative revenue-share range. Your actual rate is set in your agent agreement, and what any individual store earns depends on its foot traffic, its neighbourhood, its hours and how many customers it serves. Anytime Capital does not promise any level of income.
Typical time to serve a customer
Equipment to buy or lease
Assets your customers can buy
US-based support for your staff
The Gulf story is about remittance: high-volume, corridor-driven, worker-focused. The Turkish story is about currency. Sustained lira depreciation has made dollar-denominated holdings an ordinary part of household financial planning, and Turkey has consistently ranked among the highest-adoption crypto markets in the world for that reason.
Both produce counter demand, but for different products and different customers — remittance-driven stablecoin transfer in the Gulf, savings-driven dollar exposure in Turkey.
Both also have well-developed exchange counter formats: the exchange house in the Gulf, the döviz bürosu in Turkey.
Several regional regulators have established virtual asset frameworks with formal licensing, and others restrict crypto for payments while permitting trading. Availability is determined market by market as licensing allows.
Anytime Capital's retail counter is live in the United States. International partner locations are onboarded market by market as local licensing allows, so the first conversation is always about what is possible where your store actually is.
Anytime Capital is a registered US money services business and operates its own branches in Atlanta and Miami. The retail program extends that same platform to partner counters — which is why availability follows licensing rather than ambition, and why the first conversation about any international market is a straight one.
An employee signs in to the retail platform in a browser, runs a one-to-two minute identity verification for a first-time customer, places the order at a live price and takes the payment at the counter. Returning customers skip the verification entirely.
The store never holds cryptocurrency, never controls a private key and never funds a float. There is no equipment to buy, lease or install.
The customer receives the asset to a wallet they control, with the delivery recorded on a public blockchain — which is a stronger receipt than most counter products anywhere in the world can offer.
Markets in this region
Each market has its own counter format, its own corridors and its own regulatory position.
They are arguably the best fit of any retail format in the world — licensed, supervised, already running identification and monitoring, and already serving exactly the corridor customers who want dollar stablecoins.
Geographically and commercially it sits alongside the region, but the driver is different: Turkish demand is currency-protection rather than remittance, and it runs through döviz bürosu counters rather than exchange houses.
Anytime Capital's retail counter is live in the United States. International partner locations are onboarded market by market as local licensing allows, so the first conversation is always about what is possible where your store actually is. We will tell you plainly what is and is not possible where you are rather than taking you through an onboarding that cannot finish.
In the United States, a store acting as a serving location does not need its own money services business registration — Anytime Capital holds it. Outside the United States the answer depends entirely on the local regime, which is why availability is assessed market by market.
An employee signs in, verifies the customer once, places the order and takes the payment at the counter. There is no machine to install, no crypto for the store to hold and no float to fund.
Elsewhere in the programme
The same programme, answered for a different question, store format or market.
Tell us where your counter is and what your customers are asking for. We will be straight with you about what is possible in your market today.