International money transfers hit billions this year – The Figure Will Surely Raise Your Eye Brows

Remittances, or cross-border peer-to-peer (P2P) money transfers, hit a record high of $613 billion globally in 2018, following a two-year decline. The remittance industry will sure continue to grow as seen, which is driven largely by many digital services.

Different factors will fuel increased digital growth globally this year, such as growing smartphone penetrations, lots of demand for digital transactions, and an overall need for faster cross-border transfers. With everyone shifting to digital, comes an audience of much younger, digital-savvy consumers using remittances, a segment that companies are looking to target.

As a result of these, the world remittance industry is now becoming increasingly competitive for companies to navigate, with incumbents like Western Union and MoneyGram competing for the same pool of clients as digital startups like WorldRemit and Remitly. In order to be successful, companies across that are across board will definitely need to prioritize like four areas of customers value most in remittances: cost, convenience, speed, and safety.

In The Digital Remittances Report released recently, identify what young, digitally savvy users value in remittances. The report also reveal the concrete and working steps that digital providers could take to effectively capture this opportunity and monetize digital offerings. The primary growth driver to maintain their presence at the forefront of the digital remittance space.

The firms mentioned in the report are: Remitly, Ria, TransferWise, Western Union, WorldRemit, Xoom and MoneyGram among others.

Here are some key points from the report:

There is a new area of customer that both digital and legacy companies are competing to grab their share. Young, digital-savvy customers are the segment that all companies are vying to get, which is like creating a highly competitive dynamic service. The needs for those consumers will be transformation changed in the industry.

I have identified several tangible and serious steps firms can actually take to improve in some key areas — their cost, the convenience, the speed, and above all, security. To not only attract customers but also maintain this segment to align with their much aware preferences and ultimately win in the little space.