ANIL Kapur knows how difficult it is for people or migrant workers to send money home. And for the families at home to get the money sent fast.
He could be MoneyGram’s new Head of Asia Pacific and South Asia, but Kapur packs with him many years of remittance service experience.
“One of the big problem migrant workers face when it comes remittance service is how fast and easy they can send money home,” he says.
“I’ve been to remote villages in India and other parts of Asia to see and understand the problems faced by the communities there when in comes to receiving monies from their loved ones who work in other countries,” he adds.
Although there are banks in every countries, often the smallest branches don’t even reach these areas.
“It just don’t make sense for the banks to open branches there, but there is a big need for money to be transferred there,” says Kapur.
“This is where remittance company like MoneyGram comes in. We aim to make money transfer or remittance easy and safe,” he says.
The main difference between MoneyGram and banks is they MoneyGram operates on the same platform cross countries while banks operate on different platform which makes it troublesome to send money to another bank n another country,” he explains.
With this edge over banks, MoneyGram has managed to expand to over 200 countries with thousands of agents.
In Malaysia it partners with agents such as EZ Money Express, Lulu Money, SMJ, CIMB, Maybank, TML Remittance Centre and Akbar Money Changer, and these agents have presence even in the remote villages, making it easy to for the migrant workers, which is the biggest chunk of MoneyGram users.
Kapur says to date MoneyGram International has 48 million annual users with US$160 billion flows through the company across 200 countries annually, and 100 percent of transfers are done in near-real time.
In 2018, approximately US$100 million worth of remittance was made to and from Malaysia through MoneyGram. This reflects tremendous growth opportunities in the money transfer business here in the country.
“As we are dealing with migrant workers, we know that we need to make it easy for the to use the service and safe,” he says.
In order to send money, the sender just needs to find the closest MoneyGram agent, and present a valid ID and the recipient’s full name which teaches his or her ID and location. The sender will be given an 8-digit reference number to be shared with the recipient for picking up the money.
Besides cash, one can also send to a bank account and mobile wallet.
“We believe with such service we will be able to help empower lives in the villages in the senders’ countries, such as Indonesia, the Philippines, Bangladesh and India,” says Kapur.
And to make it easy for users, the MoneyGram website (MoneyGram.my) features an agent locator tool, which makes it easy for users to locate the nearest MoneyGram agent to them.
Commenting on security, Kapur gives his assurance that the MoneyGram platform is safe and comply with international standards.
“Besides that we also collaborate with central banks and use KYC process to prevent fraud and money laundering activities,” he says.
“So far there’s no unwanted incident or fraud reported by customers using MoneyGram service,” he adds.
Kapur says MoneyGram has setup online MoneyGram service where users can do transactions with a MoneyGram app.
“However, the service is not available in Malaysia yet,” he says.