International Remittance
The Next Generation of International Remittance:
Cross-Border Value Added Services Breakthrough advancements in value-added services to expatriates and their families.
In today’s ever-evolving and fast-paced world, connectivity is everything. One form of which is the ability to send and receive money. These solutions, considered revolutionary when they first came out over 150 years ago, have made people’s lives much easier. The ability to send money to your family or beloved ones from anywhere in the world helped families and their expatriate members come closer, increasing reliability and instant support that families need in times of despair and prosperity alike.
One hindering problem, a lot are on the table actually, is the high cost this technology imposes. IMT costs around 7% of the remitted amount in some cases. This 7% or so means a lot to many people.
Another problematic issue is security:
“International remittances are a lifeline for many people in developing countries, now more than three times the size of official development assistance (ODA), and providing more stability than other sources of household income. However, the global flow of these funds continues to happen largely through informal channels. The result is less transparency, less security, and fewer benefits for the millions who rely on international remittances.”[1]
Today the digital era offers us a solution: Cross-Border Mobile Remittance. Mobile remittance is an efficient, reliable, and convenient way to transfer money using your own mobile phone. With just a few clicks you can instantly send your close ones unlimited financial amounts.
Cross-border remittance is another game-changer when applied to mobile phones. Not only does it help increased efficiency with money monitoring and governance, by keeping it within the official economy, but also increases the reliability and security and cuts costs by several points.
It is of extreme importance to expatriates all around the world to be able to send money to their families and friends in a reliable and convenient way, and most importantly, with the least cost possible. Today, we are looking at tens of millions of immigrants, Diasporas, refugees, and expatriates worldwide. They either do not have formal access to transferring funds to loved ones back home, their only channels are too costly, or in many cases do not have the legal citizenship status in their host countries and thus forced to use informal alternatives that are quite risky and insecure. It may also simply be a poorly serviced area with very limited features and facilitations.
However, realizing this trending global epidemic, VERICASH, a leading financial technology regional provider, tackled this reality within many emerging markets across the Middle East and Africa through its VERICASH platform. Today its platform is cause for easy accessibility to a plethora of financial services, the least of which is ease of remitting money internationally through its extensive network coverage across 25 countries within the region most of which is in Africa. What started as a local mobile service evolved to include cross-border remittance. Through building a collaborated ecosystem comprising of all major financial players from banks, to Telco’s, microfinance companies, exchange companies, to others, within a market, and integrating that to similar ecosystems cross-borders, VERICASH has been able to merge multiple wallets internationally, making it extremely easier for most blue-collar workers to transfer their humble funds to their families and/or beneficiaries.
Via a single platform, all customers would be served by helping them send money securely and instantly. The cross-border service is accessible through the large existing network of point of sales found at reachable locations such as supermarket chains or merchants, easily enabling the secure and well-governed transfer of money.
With VERICASH’s platform remittance solutions, any merchants across different regions with a mobile phone can become a Remittance Agent, with no traditional banking infrastructure required. The whole process is beneficial for the three parties involved, the bank, the merchant, and the customer.
An additional challenge facing remitters is taking control over the transferred amounts. Using VERICASH, the remitter will have the advantage to choose his/her preferred delivery channel or to let the beneficiary decide the most convenient method, and at a much more competitive rate than other alternatives! For reassurance, the notification feature, confirms the transaction success to both the sender and receiver. To illustrate, using VERICASH, a Nigerian living in Europe will not only be able to easily and legitimately transfer money to his home country at an affordable rate but would be able to pay all local bills remotely through any of the 300+ providers connected on that same platform.
So rather than typically cashing out on the transfers; the receiver has the option to either cash out part of the transferred amount, dispense it in hard currency or local currency directly, use all or part of the amount to immediately pay local bills through the aggregators connected on the platform, or to entirely transfer the amount to a mobile eWallet from any of the banks on the platform. Moreover, they will enjoy unlimited value-added services offered at a lower cost, encouraging them to utilize remittance amounts directly through mobile channels such as utility and bill payments, VCN, P2M, and more. Another successful example of empowering people to control and manage their money flow is the case of Jordan/Egypt, whereby an Egyptian under banked worker in Jordan can use e-wallets powered by VERICASH and major bill aggregators such as Fawry to pay bills in his very hometown. This offers a number of value-added features.
Many transactions, which would have normally been carried out in a traditional manner, were confined within both countries’ financial systems and official economy, making it more reliable and easier to monitor and evaluate.
This is just the beginning! The future of digital mobile remittance still has a lot to offer. Stay tuned for other similar articles coming soon covering the evolution of the technology behind this hot topic.
CIT VERICASH —an international leading provider of mobile financial services— has contributed to empowering the unbanked as well as the banked by enabling them to transfer or store money, and perform remittance through their mobile phones; ensuring them an easy, safe, and efficient platform. VERICASH Platform connects different channels such as Point of Sale located at merchants or chains that offer remittance services. VERICASH enables cross-selling between different partners whether on sending or receiving sides by the exposure of services between parties. Expatriates receive unlimited value-added services.
[1] Mobile Money competing with informal channels to accelerate the digitation of remittances, Executive Summary, P3, 219