Visa

Money Transfer (Remittances)

Transfers of money from one person to another, also known as remittances, play an important role in the financial lives of those living in poverty around the world. For many, remittances represent a significant source of income to support their basic needs, including food, shelter, clothing, healthcare and education. Whether a cross-border transfer from an expatriate worker to his or her home country or a domestic transfer from a worker in a city to the family member in a rural village, remittances provide an opportunity for reaching the underserved and creating a path to inclusion in the formal financial system.

Visa’s Money Transfer service aims to enable Visa cardholders to send and receive funds through the 1.8 billion Visa cards in market today. While we are delivering our money transfer services to consumers in developed nations, we also are increasingly looking for ways to extend these services to those in emerging economies, reaching new constituents in new geographies. We believe that money transfer services — particularly receipt of cross-border remittances — represent a compelling entry point for unbanked citizens and help meet direct needs of the daily financial lives of the underserved.

Three examples of Visa Money Transfer programs operating in countries with significant sending or receiving of remittances to help the poor include:

• In Indonesia, Bank Mandiri, the country's largest bank, made Visa Money Transfer available to approximately 8 million Mandiri Visa debit cardholders. The service allows Mandiri Visa debit cardholders to send money through any of the bank's 3,000 ATMs to any other Visa cardholder in Indonesia. Recipients are able to use the money to make purchases, pay bills or withdraw cash from any Visa or PLUS ATM anywhere Visa is accepted in the world.
• In Singapore, Singapore Post Limited (SingPost) became the first post office in the world to offer a Visa Money Transfer service when it rolled out a program to all of its 51 branches. SingPost already is expanding the service to enable customers to remit funds through more than 60 SingPost automated machines, making it possible for customers to send money 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The SingPost service facilitates money transfer from customers in Singapore to Visa cardholders in nine countries around the world — Australia, China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand and the United Kingdom.
• In India, the largest remittance recipient country in the world, Visa Money Transfer was introduced in 2004 and now can reach more than 60 million Visa cardholders across more than 150 cities and towns in India.