According to a recent report by World Bank, the global remittance market is estimated to be value at $375 billion US in which over 75% is being sent to developing countries. Where as many of the developing countries has little or no access to financial services due to lack of infrastructure, poor literacy, lack of banks and ATMs etc. Many migrant workers are in need to send money frequently to their dependents for their daily household expenses and they find it difficult to send due to the reasons cited above in addition to high cost of international remittances charged by the well-established Money Remittance Organizations such as Western Union, Money Gram and other international banks and with the low speed that the money is transferred.
On the contrary to the poor financial services of 500,000 bank branches and 1.4 million ATMs worldwide, there are 3 billion mobile customers worldwide. The penetration has been the highest and the fastest in the developing nations such as India, Philippines, Brazil and Kenya inspite of being unbanked or the under-banked of all .
With its ubiquity and high penetration in nations around the world, mobile communications now
has the potential to vastly improve and transform access to remittance funds for people in
developing markets. Mobile technology can lower the cost of remittances as it removes the need
for physical points of presence and ensures a timely and secure method of transaction. This would give rise to a paradigm shift in how the international remittances have been traditionally made and it is a great opportunity for a Mobile Network Operators(MNOs) to enter the remittances market given its huge installed base of mobile subscribers.
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