Dubai: From its current focus on cash remittances, Xpress Money plans to move to digital remittances, which has been witnessing “growth through the roof,” a senior executive at the firm told Gulf News.
“Having done so much on cash remittances, now we are moving towards digital. The offtake on digital remittances was slow during the last two years, but all of a sudden it has picked up momentum,” Sudhesh Giriyan, chief operating officer at Xpress Money told Gulf News.
“We are increasingly going the digital way, whether it is the sourcing side or receipt side,” Giriyan said, adding “the importance of physical remittances would come down, but won’t completely vanish. Over a period of time, we will see more money going online, or to mobile.”
The company has a tie-up with several telecom companies in Africa, Philippines, Pakistan to transfer money on mobile or other channels. “We are very gung-ho on these channels of transfer. We are focusing a lot on account credits, we have about 49 countries for money transfer, we plan to expand further by next year, and have probably about 100 countries. We also asking banks with whom we have cash remittances tie-ups to give us account credits,” he added. The firm is also looking to launch online remittances from the US, Canada, and the UK and Australia.
Predominant portion or about 90 per cent of Xpress Money’s business comes from cash remittances, but the “numbers are going through the roof,” when it comes to account credits or mobile remittances or any digital form of money transfer.
“Two years ago, the cash remittances used to contribute 97 per cent of the total business, but now it is 90 per cent. Going forward we should move to two third and one third kind of a ratio,” Giriyan said. The company currently handles “a very good percentage” of the $150 billion cash remittance industry.
Cash:
“We have done so much on cash remittance side catering to 150 countries across the globe,” Giriyan said.
Even on cash remittances, Xpress Money is looking at 170 countries from the current 150 countries especially to Latin American countries along with European countries.
“We are also strengthening our presence in and around Australia. We are following the hub and spoke model. Through this model, we are able to facilitate remittances from say Australia to 12 different countries from there, from Russia to CIS countries, from Middle East to South Asia and South East Asia etc, from North America to Latin America etc,” he added.