Payza Launches New Remittance Service in Bangladesh (Dec. 20, 2012)
Dec. 20, 2012
A new money transfer service from online payment platform Payza will enable Bangladeshis living in the U.S. to quickly and easily send money to relatives and friends back home. With its new SimplySendBD service, Payza aims to capture a piece of the $14 billion annual Bangladeshi remittance market—and establish a successful template that can be expanded to additional countries around the world, the company says.
Earlier this year, Payza became the first online payment processor to earn a license from Bangladesh Bank, the nation’s central bank. Soon after, the company established a remittance service to serve Bangladesh’s growing freelance IT sector by integrating its network with local banks. Since then, Payza has been laying the groundwork for the new remittance service, partnering with financial institutions and NGOs to establish a network that reaches beyond banks—most of which are located in urban areas—and into the rural countryside, home to many remittance recipients. While recipients of transfers via SimplySend do have the option of receiving funds into a bank account, the service soon will include a cash-pickup option at more than 3,000 locations across the nation.
“One of the key challenges to overcome is how to reach people who don’t have banking in the villages.” Payza CEO Alastair Graham tells Paybefore. “Through our NGO partners, we’re pushing our [remittance] network out further throughout the country, rather than just in the cities,” he says, adding that such expansion via nonbank entities is in line with the Bangladeshi government’s preferred strategy of establishing payment networks within the country.
SimplySendBD features a simple pricing model; transfers up to $500 incur a $5 fee, while users sending remittances over that amount are charged $10. Transfer recipients do not have to have a Payza account, the company said. While SimplySend initially only will be available for U.S.-to-Bangladesh transfers, Payza hopes to expand the service to additional markets. “This is a model that works globally,” Graham tells Paybefore, citing India, along with other markets in Asia and South America as areas for possible expansion.
