Barclays targets diaspora with mobile money transfer service

• The service, which was launched in the British market early this year, allows phone users to send money straight to recipients’ phones, according to a report published on Sunday in the Financial Times newspaper.
• Barclays will charge a commission on the currency exchange but no fee. It expects a Sh13,000 (£100) transfer to Africa to cost less than Sh390 (£3),reported the Financial Times.
• Barclays joins other financial service providers who are seeking to tap income from diaspora remittances on realisation of their need for convenient and reputable channels of sending money home following nasty experiences with relatives and friends.

Barclays Bank is targeting Kenyans living abroad with a new mobile phone money transfer system set to be launched locally this week.

The service, which was launched in the British market early this year, allows phone users to send money straight to recipients’ phones, according to a report published yesterday in the Financial Times newspaper.

The FT report quoted Antony Jenkins, head of retail business at Barclays, who said the bank was keen to tap into the “corridors of African expatriates” who live in the UK but regularly send money back to their families. He estimated there were about 200,000 people living in the UK who were born in Kenya.

“Barclays plans to launch the mobile-to-mobile service in Kenya this week and expand it to a number of other African countries, including South Africa, later this year,” reported the Financial Times.

During release of its half-year financial results earlier this month, the bank’s managing director, Mr Adan Mohamed, hinted at the launch but declined to give details on the system’s features.

“We are looking to launch it in a big way by the end of this month,” Mr Mohamed told the Daily Nation.

Barclays will charge a commission on the currency exchange but no fee. It expects a Sh13,000 (£100) transfer to Africa to cost less than Sh390 (£3), reported the Financial Times.

The Britain-based lender intends to launch the service to European markets next year, a move that underlines Kenya’s growing significance as a hub for alternate banking systems.

Barclays joins other financial service providers who are seeking to tap income from diaspora remittances on realisation of their need for convenient and reputable channels of sending money home following nasty experiences with relatives and friends.

Nation Media Group (NMG) last week launched a money transfer service that will target the large number of diaspora visitors to its websites to facilitate their remittances.

The service dubbed NationHela allows customers to send and receive money from anywhere in the world, with the funds being credited straight into their NationHela prepaid Visa cards.

Safaricom launched its international M-Pesa services in the UK last year and is also in a partnership with global money transfer services provider Western Union.

Equity Bank signed a deal with mobile phone firm Essar allowing its account holders to receive international remittances through the yuCash transfer system.

Unique users
KCB and Co-operative Bank have further created investment schemes to help people working in the diaspora to manage their wealth in the local market.

“We see each system serving unique, different users and may not necessarily lead to one dominating others out of business,” said Standard Investment Bank in a recent market report.