The Global Remittance Market is a $900 Billion/Year Industry That Exploits The Poorest People in Our Society. Crypto Can Easily Disrupt and Replace This Industry.

The global remittance market is one of the most corrupt and inefficient industries in the world, run by a small cabal of powerful banks and institutions. Using arbitrarily high fees they take away money from the poorest and most exploited people in society- third-world immigrants working in foreign countries that send money back home to their family. There are many countries such as the Philippines, India, most of Africa and South America where remittance inflows account for a third of the entire GDP. And they are charged with high cross-border transfer fees. These companies literally leech of these people and take away large percentage from the little they have. The cost of transfer is so high in many of these countries that recipients have to pay at least 10% for smaller remittances, and it can go all the way up to 22%. South African and African countries like really suffer from such high average fees.

Money transfer services are expensive due to mass inefficiency in the industry, corruption, regulatory confusion in different countries and different exchange values and a lack of transparency in the exchange rates, adding another invisible cost to the consumer. By having institutions and big banks run the remittance market in such a inefficient way, countries that depend on overseas money inflow suffer. In addition, all the parties involved don’t have a direct relationship, and with no central authority responsible for clearing and settlement, causing complications and slowing down the transfer process and making it even more expensive. Also most government institutions have no association with banks in third-world countries, so the power to regulate fees is concentrated in the hands of a few corrupt local banks of that particular state.

Therefore, we need to start using low cost cryptocurrencies like XLM and NANO that have nearly zero fees. It’s surprising that a company specializing in this hasn’t come out with an easy to use mobile app yet. I’ve heard that these powerful institutions use regulation to control the fiat to crypto on ramps and off ramps to keep their power. Using an immutable, uncensorable and instant network with zero intermediaries, the recipients of remittances will immensely benefit.