Hawala or hewala (Arabic: حِوالة ḥawāla, meaning transfer or sometimes trust), originating in India as havala (Hindi: हवाला), also known as havaleh in Persian, and xawala or xawilaad in Somali, is a popular and informal value transfer system based on the performance and honour of a huge network of money brokers (known as hawaladars).

They operate outside of, or parallel to, traditional banking, financial channels and remittance systems. The system requires a minimum of two hawaladars that take care of the "transaction" without the movement of cash or telegraphic transfer. While hawaladars are spread throughout the world, they are primarily located in the Middle East, North Africa, the Horn of Africa and the Indian subcontinent. Hawala follows Islamic traditions, but its use is not limited to Muslims.

The hawala system originated in India. In 2003 Hawala as a legal concept was documented, finding evidence of Hawala reaching back to 1327, in a publication by Matthias Schramm and Markus Taube, with the title "Evolution and institutional foundation of the hawala financial system".

It has been speculated that "Hawala" itself influenced the development of the agency in common law and in civil laws, such as the aval in French law, the aval in Portuguese law, and the avallo in Italian law. The words aval and avallo bear a similarity to hawala, and the context of intensive trade between Italian cities and the Muslim world suggests a possible link. The transfer of debt was "not permissible under Roman law but became widely practiced in medieval Europe, especially in commercial transactions", potentially borrowing from hawala. Agency was also "an institution unknown to Roman law" as no "individual could conclude a binding contract on behalf of another as his agent". On the other hand, Islamic law and the later common law "had no difficulty in accepting agency as one of its institutions in the field of contracts and of obligations in general". The claims about the Islamic origins of hawala have later been challenged by Cinar.

Following the September 11 attacks in 2001, international organizations responsible for counterterrorism and enforcing laws against money laundering have directed their efforts on identifying problems within the hawala, as well as other remittance systems. The First International Conference on Hawala in May 2002 published the Regulatory Frameworks for Hawala and Other Remittance Systems. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) contributed a chapter, in which informal value transfer systems were considered. According to the IMF, countries with limited financial services experience macroeconomic consequences because residents rely heavily on informal fund transfer systems. Informal value transfer systems share common characteristics, including anonymity and lack of regulation or official scrutiny. Therefore informal value transfer systems may be susceptible to use by criminal organizations for money laundering and terrorist financing.

In the most basic variant of the hawala system, money is transferred via a network of hawala brokers, or hawaladars, without actually moving money. According to the author Sam Vaknin, there are large hawaladar operators with networks of middlemen in cities across many countries, but most hawaladars are small businesses who work at hawala as a sideline or moonlighting operation.

In general, the process of hawala operates as follows:

The unique feature of the system is that no promissory instruments are exchanged between the hawala brokers: the transaction takes place entirely on the honour system. As the system does not depend on the legal enforceability of claims, it can operate even in the absence of a legal and juridical environment. Trust and extensive use of connections are the components that distinguish it from other remittance systems. Hawaladar networks are often based on membership in the same family, village, clan or ethnic group, and cheating is punished by effective excommunication and the loss of honour, which lead to severe economic hardship.