Mobile wallet players are leveraging partnerships to drive growth in remittance sector

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Remittance firms across the world are entering into strategic partnerships with mobile wallet providers to get access to new markets. The focus is primarily on providing remittance services to the migrant workers at a cheaper rate and convenience of their mobile phones.

For mobile wallets players, remittance opens up an additional revenue stream to diversify their business. The new business aids in achieving the long-term strategic goal of mobile payment providers of evolve to a comprehensive financial services provider.

The partnership will also allow remittance firms to reach out to a larger user base and take advantage of the larger recipient base on the mobile platform to easily establish their business in new markets. In August 2020, TrueMoney collaborated with Thunes, a global remittance firm, to extend its cross-border payment services. The partnership will enable TrueMoney users to receive remittances in 60 currencies across 100 countries where Thunes operates. The partnership with Thunes will enhance TrueMoney’s competitiveness as remittance service provider in the South East Asian market, which has the lowest average remittance costs across the world due to high volumes, technological deployment and competitive markets.

Similarly, Alipay entered into partnerships with multiple remittance firms to expand its remittance businesses globally. The mobile payment provider is particularly eyeing on a greater integration in the European market. In 2020, the Chinese e-wallet giant teamed up with some of the leading remittance firms including WorldRemit, TransferWise, Azimo, and PaySend. The partnerships further validates Alipay’s inclination towards collaborating with companies that already have an access and market share in the European market.

Alipay currently has more than 1.2 billion users across the world and the app facilitates remittance service from over 40 countries. Ant Financial, parent company of Alipay, also operates its own blockchain-based international remittance service for users in the Philippines and Hong Kong.

Digital innovations in remittance industry have seen an upsurge over the past few years owing to the evolving customer requirements. Rampant mobile wallet adoption across the globe has driven various remittance firms to partner with mobile wallet players to provide low-cost and convenient cross-border money transfer services.

Mobile wallets are expected to play a pivotal role in growth of remittance services over the coming years. Growing user base of mobile wallets makes the platform the most effective means to increase the accessibility of cheaper remittance services to a wider migrant population.

Remittance industry is expected more of such collaborations between remittance firms and mobile wallets. Mobile wallets will continue to venture into or expand their existing remittance business to diversify their revenue stream.