Dear Money Transfer Operator,
I hope you are faring well in these unsafe times and you and your family & loved ones are safe and healthy.
First of all, I want to thank you for your continued patience. Just to bring you up to speed, my colleagues and I have been in contact with literally over a 100+ money transfer operators from around the world and have been asking them their top five pain points. The response has been overwhelming and in the past few weeks we have been working diligently to address these needs.
From our various correspondent and correlation of the results, it seems the following points are the ones most in-demand by almost all the money transfer operators across the world.
In no particular order, they are:
- Access to Banking. Being able to hold on to a bank account in their name that is money services business-friendly, understands the remittance business, and has the ability to send money overseas. All this for a relatively low cost to the MSB / MTO.
- Localized Payment Processing, predominantly, ACH (Automated Clearing House) payments (for the United States). Looking for banking or payment institution relationships that offer a low-cost ACH processing for US-based MTOs.
- Card Acquiring & Payment Processing. Being able to accept debit cards (credit cards were low on the requirement list), and being able to process them in a relatively lower MDR (Merchant Discount Rate).
- Offshore / Off-Territory Banking Relationship. To have partner bank accounts, outside the territory in which they are licensed, that can provide quasi/pseudo correspondent banking and delivery services to the money transfer operators. Turkey & Europe are preferred locations.
- Expand the Payout Network. Enhance and expand the existing correspondent tie-up network whilst at the same time, somehow reducing the time & back-office effort, and minimizing capital associated with pre-funding. Huge demand and requirement for on-demand liquidity and pre-funding.
- Online Web-based System. Most money transfer operators have a huge need to expand their operations online without investing heavily in developing their own solutions, without increasing IT headcount and without getting bothered in the complexities of owning and maintaining a complex code base for the software product. The system should come with all facets of online transactions, eKYC, user registration, transaction monitoring system, fraud management, payment processing, etc.
- Extended Licensing Options (Collaboration). To be able to increase their license footprint, without working with competitors? How to structure this is in such a way to have non-compete and using the architecture working for the association as done with the original MLS (multiple listing service, not to be confused with the NMLS).
- More Vertical Product Offering. To be able to give customers much more than simple remittances. Want to be able to issue cards, bill payments, mobile top-ups, and other vertically integrated services without an upfront investment.
- Gravitating from Remittances to a Neo Bank. Taking advantage of the existing customer base and converting to a more revenue-generating base that offers enhanced financial services products for your customers (wallets, debit cards, credit-based products, etc.) where you can enhance your revenue generation.
- Small Value Transfers & Micropayments in Real-time. The world is slowly heading towards small value transfers and micropayments internationally in real-time. How can you be a part of it and join the bandwagon?
- Increase in Business. Increasing the service offering to include B2B, B2C, and other payment types, and if you have a physical network, how to bring that part of a worldwide network of physical locations for joint remittances?
- How to get started with Cryptocurrency. Moreover how to get started with cryptocurrency without jeopardizing the existing business relationships, especially banking, payment processing, and whilst keeping things kosher with the regulator?
If any of these twelve points resonate with you, then perhaps we need to talk. Our company has been working on these challenges for over the past four years and we can proudly say, we have finally managed to come through on all of these hurdles above and deliver a pragmatic solution to existing money transfer operators, remittance service providers, money services businesses, etc.
I encourage you to share this with your senior management and talk it over. This is your wish list. It is our deliverable list. This is not a dream. We offer all of these services today. You may not be ready for all the services on day one, but rest assured, this is the culmination of engaging with over 100+ money transfer operators and over 1000+ fintech that we have talked to over the years.
You can take either one of the two positions. Subscribe to what is being cited above and ready your company to future proof yourself or you can sink into the present, which means, you will eventually be looking at obsolescence.
The choice is yours. Feel free to contact us and start the much needed dialog and journey.
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This page was last updated on January 16, 2023.
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