Remittance / Money Transfer

Money Remittance

Home Remittance

Every year, Billions of US Dollars are sent by migrant workers to their home country. Money remittance (Inward home remittance) payments are the backbone of any developing country, which has a large diaspora (migrated population). Remittances today make a sizable portion of the GDP of many emerging countries like Philippines, Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Vietnam, and many more.

With over US$ 336 Billion (2008 figures) in home remittances, both government and bankers are trying to understand how to maximize the potential/leverage home remittances.

The global financial meltdown of 2008 has slowed the remittance market down, but not to severely. 2010 figures for remittances as measured by the World Bank are hovering around the US$ 325 Billion mark, and with the predicted 7%-8% growth predicted, it is estimated by 2013, the worldwide remittance market would be about US$ 404 Billion.

Remittances flows to developing countries recovered to pre-crisis level of $325 billion in 2010, but have failed to keep up with rising prices and the appreciation of currencies of several large recipient countries relative to the US dollar. While remittances grew 5.6 percent in US dollar terms in 2010, they grew by a smaller 3.9 percent after accounting for exchange rate changes, and fell by 2.7 percent after adjusting for inflation (see table 3).

Currently four methods of transfer are available for home remittances:

Wire Transfer: from origin country to beneficiary’s country.
Walk-in Services: offered by Money Transfer Companies like Moneygram or Western Union, etc.
Online (Web) Money Transfer: via debit/credit card or directly via direct account debit (Internet check)
Carry: Friends and Relatives get paid by to settle with Beneficiary in their country (borders on Hawala also known as Hundi)

IBFS specializes in the Online (Web) Money Transfer market and works with banks worldwide towards a cost-effective, home remittance solution. Our target market is for the Legal, Banked, White-Collar professional whom we aid to send money back home in a safe, reliable and cost efficient manner.

Online Money Remittance: How Does It Work?

Our remittance solution is SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) model, that is self-hosted and turnkey. It a 100% online white-labeled remittance product (service) that is specifically marketed to banks for inward remittances into their countries.

The white-labeled service allows banks to have an established mechanism to receive electronic payments via the Internet for purposes of inward remittances.

Some highlighted features of the product are:

100% White-labeled
Currently being offered from US to any country
Directly tied-in with an authorized/licensed Automated Clearing House (ACH) processor in the US
Alll monetary transactions are routed and handled by the ACH
Day 1 debit to client accounts and Day 2 credit via electronic funds transfer into nostro account of the correspondent bank in New York

If you do not have a correspondent bank in New York, we can assist you with finding the right bank to have your local NYC account.

Settlement and Processing of the accounts are done at end-of day.

Ability to current process:

VISA payments (Credit Card & Debit Card)
Mastercard payments (Credit Card & Debit Card)
Direct Account Debit (also know as Internet Check or eCheck)

We offer fully automated detailed transaction logging and reporting.

Markets & Opportunity

IBFS currently has setup for US/Canada as the country of origin for remittance. We are actively working with out partners to include the following origin for remittance countries/territories:

United Kingdom
EU
Scandinavian Countries
Japan
Singapore
Australia/NC
Middle East (UAE, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait)

For beneficiary markets, we are currently open for business to the following countries/territories:

Afghanistan
Pakistan
India
Bangladesh
Nepal
Sri Lanka
Maldives
Vietnam
Thailand
Indonesia
Philippines
Malaysia
Countries in Africa
Counties in South America

Depending on customer demand and merchantability of the alternative payment methods, we are working with the following:

American Express
Discover Card
Diners Card
Various Euro based payment cards
Paypal
Alipay
Daopay
iKobo
Xoom
mPay
Moneybookers
AlertPay
Mobile payments via external country (payment top-ups)
Remittance cards (VISA/MC vanity Debit cards, Store Value Cards that are re-loadable)

Rates (Fees)

IBFS’ fees are the lowest in the industry for a hosted, white-labeled home-remittance product.

Low acquiring fees (or Interchange fees) for credit/debit cards, averaging between 3.0% and 4.0%. Fees can be lowered down to 2.9% based on a healthy account activity
Zero interchange fees for Internet checks (only network / association handling fees of US$ 10 is charged)
No limit on remittance amount of the number of transaction that can be performed on the system (albeit, risk limits are defined by each customer)
ACH holds on to a rolling-reserve for up to 180 days for charge backs, etc. (holding tenure and reserve requirements can be lowered and worked upon)
Low completion fees US$ 3 (on bankside)

Handling & Processing

IBFS home remittance solution handling and processing features are as below:

Ability to check for AVS or (US region only) and CVV on credit/debit cards
Ability to process/block transactions based on Qualified and Non Qualified cards
Ability to process based on IP Address location, Country Location and/or US Issued Credit Cards only
Vanity URL for banks allowed
Full Copy Requests/Transactions Request facility for charge back investigations
CNP (Card Note Presentment) also provided for (First Presentment)
SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) model, no up-front heavy investment in expensive hardware &/or software required by your bank

Security

IBFS’s home remittance payment system does the following checks before a financial transaction can be approved for onward settlement:

In addition, IBFS’s provides advance fraud detection that:

provides detailed transaction level for automatic screening for fraudulent transactions
sophisticated algorithms for fraud modeling, which uses transactions history, geographic location and IP information
transaction size and velocity limits can be customized by the bank at the user level

Our system also provides…

128-Bil SSL encryption used for all transactions
Backend processing equipment is Triple DES Encryption certified
Server and Equipment are hosted in a Tier IV datacenter (East Cost) that is SAS 70 Type II Compliant
Business Continuity -2nd datacenter on the West Cost
Automatic failover and Revert back
99.99% Uptime Provided
Daily continuous real-time backups with offsite backup

If you are interested in an inward money remittance service for your bank, please contact us.