I feel I am on a real Bank bashing thing at the moment.  International remittances are another thing we blogged about many times earlier.

Now some big agendas are starting to become more obvious. 19 mobile firms are backing the GSM Associations pilot programme to move Global Remittance onto mobile platforms. Estimates vary but the UK send back home £2.5 billion in a year. With fees being anything from 6% to 12% that makes for very sound business. At a global level around $230 billion is sent home annually.

Source: Mobile remittance – the call you want to get « Credit Union Direct

This was my comment on the CU Direct blog in response to their post.

Banks and the technology they have implemented (SWIFT) are not prepared for simple retail person to person payments. Banks are cut out of this, and I think have lost this market, despite efforts to lever likes of Citi’s global payment offerring (as a wholesale service to any Bank).

SWIFT is the international money transfer system built by Banks to make Bank to Bank transfers happen securely around the world.  They key is Bank to Bank.  If Customer A in Switzerland, wants to send a transfer to Customer B in Japan, A needs to have the Banking information for B.  Does not sound like a big deal?  Speaking from experience, I have several people that we have occasion to send money to, and I have to maintain a (secure) record of all of them, and their information.  That information includes:

• name
• address
• Bank
• Bank address
• account number
• special routing code to save the branch manually looking it up (yes its not online)

That’s a lot of stuff! 

Then think Paypal mobile;  what do I need:

• phone number

Why – because Paypal have created the link between each user ID and that users Bank account already.  If you are a Paypal member, then the arrangement is there for you. 

hmmm – which is easier.  Sit at home and make one text message, or go to the branch, between 9am, and 4pm, with the above information, etc etc.

The way Banks do this, is centred on having enough endpoints in enough countries make their system worthwhile. 

I think Banks have lost this battle.  There are options, that some might take – partner with those who have the infrastructure set up, e.g., MoneyGram, or Citibank.  Walmart Bank have partnered with MoneyGram.