Wireless operator Orange is testing in the Ivory Coast a new money transfer system: Orange Money. Strategies Telecom & Media interviews Marc Rennard, executive director in charge of Orange’s operations in Africa, Middle-East and Asia. about Orange Money. As we've seen previously with M-PESA in Kenya, the mobile operators are focusing much of their mobile payments initiatives on markets where a large majority of the population is unbanked.

Affinity Mobile has announced that adoption of the mobile wallet features enabled by its MADE platform is growing rapidly. According to Affinity, 'following the nationwide launch of Trumpet Mobile, Trumpet subscribers are quickly taking advantage of the mobile wallet capabilities with almost 50 percent of customers activating a mobile wallet at the point of sale.'   » Continue Reading

paybox and Globe Telecom have announced they are teaming up to extend the reach of their remittance network solutions and offering overseas Filipinos worldwide a cheaper and more convenient way to send money home.   » Continue Reading

Celent has published a new report titled 'The Would-Be Disruptors: New Technologies in the Remittance Space' that 'examines the application of technology that holds the promise of making cross-border remittances less expensive, quicker, more convenient, and more secure than traditional low-tech remittance models.'   » Continue Reading

Trumpet Mobile and RadioShack Corporation have announced the nationwide availability of Trumpet Mobile's prepaid wireless services at more than 4,300 RadioShack neighborhood locations. "As one of the fastest growing prepaid wireless service providers, Trumpet Mobile is a pioneer in the prepaid mobile money transfer market, which allows subscribers the unique ability to make Western Union money transfers within the U.S. and to Latin America and the Caribbean from their mobile phones."   » Continue Reading

Sara Silver reports for the Wall St. Journal on plans by Western Union, RadioShack, and Affinity Mobile's Trumpet Mobile to introduce a new service that 'lets people send money through their cellphones.' Silver says that 'to use the service, people will have to go to one of RadioShack's more than 4,000 stores and sign up for a Trumpet pre-paid phone - a cellphone where customers pay in advance for minutes to be used over a fixed period of time. Customers can then load up to $200 onto their phones for transfer via Western Union's network either within the U.S. or internationally.' Earlier this month, Kimberly Johnson reported on Affinity Mobile for the Denver Post.

NetSpend has announced it has entered into an agreement with Procesa International to offer NetSpend customers the ability to pay bills or load minutes to cell phones for friends or family members living in Mexico, Central or South America.   » Continue Reading

Wells Fargo has announced that it has "extended its Foreign Exchange Online service to small businesses. This service allows businesses to send and receive foreign currency wires in more than 90 currencies using an internet connection."   » Continue Reading

In an article titled 'Money is going mobile through phone services', Cassell Bryan-Lowe reports for the Wall St. Journal about Safaricom, a joint venture between Vodafone and Telkom Kenya, that provides person-to-person remittance services in Kenya. According to the article, Vodafone is planning to add India as well as cross-border remittance services between Kenya and the UK.

Citi has announced the launch of QuikRemit, a "white-labeled, customizable and easy to integrate remittance platform with distribution and foreign exchange capabilities spanning more than 90 countries. QuikRemit enables banks, corporations, and money transfer organizations to offer their customers and employees a secure and compliant solution for international funds transfer."   » Continue Reading

Visa and Singapore Post Limited (SingPost) have announced that they will support the Visa Money Transfer remittance service from 51 designated post offices in Singapore enabling the transfer of money to to Visa cardholders in Australia, China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand and the United Kingdom. This is the first time Visa Money Transfer has been made available through a postal service provider.   » Continue Reading

FSV Payment Systems and MiCash have announced "the general availability of a fully integrated card-to-cash international money transfer functionality on prepaid payroll debit cards offered by FSV. This unique functionality is available currently to MiCash prepaid debit cardholders."   » Continue Reading

CPNI has announced an agreement with PROSA (Promocion y Operacion, S.A. de C.V.), the largest provider of electronic transactions in Latin America, in which PROSA will provide financial institutions in Mexico with the centralized payments processing backbone for CPNI's Phone Authorized Transfer (PAT) mobile payment solutions.   » Continue Reading

Purepay, a $100 million buyout fund focused on payments, banking and the financial supply chain, has announced that it has acquired a controlling interest in Netvantage, a remittance processing software provider focused in the middle market commercial customer.   » Continue Reading

The GSM Association (GSMA), a global trade association representing over 700 GSM mobile phone operators, and Western Union have announced an agreement "to facilitate the development of cross-border mobile money transfer services."   » Continue Reading

Jon Van writes for the Chicago Tribune about startup aKos Technology Corp. and its founder, Daniel Csoka. He plans to enable prepaid wireless carriers to provide remittance services from mobile handsets.

Remittances to Mexico, free trade and cross-border banking are the focus of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas' latest issue of Southwest Economy (PDF). According to the Fed, "over the last decade or so, inflation-adjusted remittances [to Mexico] have grown at an average annual rate of 15.6 percent. Since 2000, the rate has risen to 20.4 percent."   » Continue Reading

Purepay, a $100 million buyout fund focused on payments, banking and the financial supply chain, announced today that it has acquired Creditron, a Toronto-based remittance software provider focused primarily on middle market commercial customers in the U.S. and Canada. Creditron's existing management team will continue to direct the company on a day-to-day basis.   » Continue Reading

Buxfer, an online money tracking service, has announced they will be using Amazon's new Flexible Payment Service to make online payments between users in the US - and they're offering it free of charge (certain limitations) through the end of August. Going forward, Buxfer will be charging the receiver of funds for the payment by passing through the fees Amazon charges them for FPS. Buxfer only supports payments funded from the sender's Amazon Payments account balance or from the sender's bank account - but not from a sender's credit card (presumably because Amazon FPS, like PayPal, does not support personal account holders receiving credit card payments). See their blog post here. Jim Bruene also reports on Buxfer on his Netbanker blog.

Wells Fargo has announced that "Wells Fargo ExpressSend customers with qualifying accounts now can have transaction fees discounted or waived and have more choices in how they remit money to Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, China, Vietnam, India and the Philippines."   » Continue Reading

Chase has introduced Rapid Cash - calling it "an easy new way to send money to Mexico for free."   » Continue Reading

Reuters is reporting that Travelex is acquiring business-to-business payments provider Reusch International for $440 million and merging it into Travelex's Commercial Foreign Exchange division.

The Center for Financial Services Innovation has published a new white paper titled "Card-Based Remittances; A Closer Look at Supply and Demand" (PDF) written by Manuel Orozco, Katy Jacob and Jennifer Tescher. From the executive summary: "This report presents the results of an analysis of the supply and demand for card-based transfers among migrants. We analyze a nationwide study of Latin American and Caribbean migrant remittance senders and their access and use of card products of all kinds. Coupled with extensive interviews with card-based remittance providers, this analysis allows us to investigate the relationship between the supply for card-based remittances and remittance senders’ demands for financial products."

The GSM Association has announced it is working with MasterCard to launch a pilot programme aimed at "tapping the ubiquity and ease-of-use of mobile communications to enable the world's 200 million international migrant workers to easily and securely send remittances to their dependents, many of whom don't have bank accounts. By exploiting the extensive reach of the mobile networks, the programme will complement existing local remittances channels and make transferring money internationally significantly more affordable." A part of the announcement, MasterCard has made available a Unbanked and Underbanked Backgrounder, saying that "Under the agreement with GSMA, MasterCard intends to provide various payment card products as well as the international transaction switching, clearing and settlement for the MasterCard® Money Send™ transfer service via its single, globally integrated network."   » Continue Reading

Jeffrey Gangemi writes for Business Week about Microfinance International - MFIC - a "microfinance and remittance processing upstart" that provides "a remittance delivery platform that can be licensed to banks, new loan products for migrant workers in the U.S., larger loans to provide more lending capital to microfinance institutions in developing countries, and a burgeoning network of retail banking outlets in the U.S. geared toward serving the needs of low-income people."

Sheila Riley reports for Investor's Business Daily about the international remittance market - as big banks are growing increasingly interested in this market. Riley quotes Celent analyst Dan Schatt who says "the big opportunity is for banks to basically take back a market that they should have more control over and be able to succeed in."

Wells Fargo has announced that it is the first major U.S. bank to offer consumer remittance services to China and Vietnam along with expanding its consumer remittance services to the Philippines.   » Continue Reading

Mary Jordan writes for the Washington Post Foreign Service about the Philippines and Globe Telecom's G-Cash mobile payments service in her article titled "New Conductors Speed Global Flows of Money". According to Jordan, "Globe Telecom officials said Filipino workers in 17 countries, including the United States, can now use their phones to send money home. In the United States, they said, the service recently linked up with remittance centers in California, Nevada and Texas."

Francine Brevetti writes for InsideBayArea.com about the growth in the remittance market - estimated to have reached $256 billion in transfers in 2005 and growing at more than 10 percent annually. Brevetti examines how banks have, over the last several years, been competing more effectively with the major players like Western Union and Moneygram.

The new issue of the Visa Quarterly focuses on emerging markets in an interview with Visa International's Debbie Arnold, vice president and managing director for emerging markets. Other articles include Financial Literacy Unveiled, Visa's Remittance Solutions, a look at WAY Systems' Mobile Transaction Terminal, and Credit Bureaus and Visa.

Rick Rothacker and Binyamin Appelbaum write for the Charlotte Observer about what some banks have been doing to attract Hispanic customers - describing the latest push by banks to offer low-cost or even free services to transfer money to friends and relatives in foreign countries.

The British Government's Department for International Development has prepared a research report titled "BME Remittance Survey" (PDF) that provides a comprehensive look at the private money transfer habits of Britain’s Asian, African, Caribbean and Chinese communities.

Visa International, Latin America and Caribbean Region, has conducted a study that "revealed the banking potential of remittance recipients, as well as their interest in establishing more productive relationships with financial institutions. The remittance market reached US$52 billion in 2005, marking a 15 percent increase over the previous year."   » Continue Reading

Carolyn Said of the San Francisco Chronicle writes about the cost of sending remittances to Latin America.

For years, wire transfers through market leader Western Union and its competitor MoneyGram were the main game in town for people in the United States sending remittances back home, other than informal channels such as asking a friend to carry money home. But in the past few years, increased competition from banks, credit unions and all kinds of new businesses has begun to chip away at the wire-transfer services' grip on the market -- and their prices.

Xoom has announced a new turn-key solution, Xoom WebAgent that enables banks, credit unions, retailers and money transfer operators to build or expand their money transfer business without worrying about the complex logistical, technical and legal hurdles associated with operating a remittance business. Xoom announced that one of the first companies to begin using WebAgent is the Midwestern bank MetaBank.   » Continue Reading

The Hispanic Marketing & Public Relations blog has posted a podcast interview with Wells Fargo Senior Vice President Daniel Ayala in which he talks about his business at Wells Fargo serving Hispanics - not just for remittances but for their whole financial lives.

Krissah Williams writes for the Washington Post about international remittances - where competition over the last five years has saved immigrants nearly $5 billion in fees according to a report released today by the Inter-American Development Bank and the Annie E. Casey Foundation.

Coinstar has announced signing a definitive agreement to purchase Travelex Money Transfer Ltd. for approximately $27 million in cash. TMT is the third largest money transfer network in terms of agent locations and countries in which they do business. Currently TMT operates an agent network in over 17,000 locations in 138 countries.   » Continue Reading

Yvette Armendariz writes for the Arizona Republic about new ways to send remittances including one introduced Tuesday by Stored Value Cards Inc. called the Futura Maestro Prepaid Debit Card, issued by MetaBank under license from MasterCard.   » Continue Reading

Xoom has announced the launch of its money transfer service to Mexico and a partnership with HSBC for pickup at any of its 1,300 locations.

“We understand that people work hard for their money and we are excited to launch our safe, cost effective and convenient service to Mexico. HSBC is a terrific partner and is certain to offer our recipients in Mexico the best possible money transfer experience.”, said James Joaquin, Xoom’s President and CEO.