money transfer

A global money transfer company MoneyGram announced the addition of three new agents in South America to its wide network: Bancolombia in Colombia; Banco de Credito in Peru, and Banco Vision in Paraguay.

With these new partners MoneyGram expands its network with 1,103 new agent locations to a total of 11,305 locations.

AlertPay announced that now its customers can send online payments for free in India. Users may receive unlimited funds in their AlertPay e-wallet and keep it there for indefinite time.

AlertPay account holders are free to send it to family and friends, make online purchases for goods and services or withdraw it by check or bank wire. Either with Personal or Business account users can send money for free by e-wallet or credit card to anyone with or without an AlertPay account.
 

MoneyGram International announced it has added two new agents this year to its agent network. Now Friendly Check and RiteCheck are also offering international money transfer and bill payment services under the brand of MoneyGram.

Friendly Check based in North Carolina started offering MoneyGram services May 16. This adds 45 more locations across North Carolina and Virginia. The agent offers MoneyGram Express Payment and Utility Bill Payment products in addition to money transfers.

A largest communications and technology company in Turkey, Turkcell announced its partnership with Garanti Bank to conjointly launch a new co-branded prepaid card Cep-T ParaCard.

The Western Union Company signed an agreement to purchase one of its leading money transfer network agents in Europe Finint S.r.l.

Finint covers over 10,000 locations across Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom. At the moment Western Union owns 30% of the company and now it will buy the remaining 70%.

PayNearMe has made several announcements on new extensions it added to its payments platform to help consumers complete remote transactions with cash.

First new technology is PayNearMe Embedded Barcode Remittance (EBR). Now billers can embed PayNearMe Barcodes directly into their customers’ statements. EBR allows customers to take their bills to a local store, starting with any of nearly 6,200 7-Eleven® stores nationwide, and pay the amount owed with cash at the register.

A global money transfer company MoneyGram International launched a unique music album, “CRICKET FOR PEACE.” The “CRICKET FOR PEACE” album, launched by Kunal Ganjawala, a popular Indian film music singer. The album is the culmination of a three-month-long program from February - April 2011 during the ICC World Cup 2011.

MoneyGram conducted a multi-country, multi-lingual initiative in Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka and attracted compositions from more than 100 bands.

Western Union announced that now consumers can make direct transfers to the the mobile “wallets” of Safaricom M-PESA subscribers in Kenya from 45 countries and territories.

“We are pleased to extend our service with Safaricom, and we look forward to adding additional functionality for M-PESA users in the near future,” said David Yates, Executive Vice President and President, Business Development and Innovation, Western Union.

A digital security solutions provider Gemalto has partnered with Zimbabwe’s network operator NetOne to enable underbanked consumers to initiate mobile money transfers. NetOne will deploy Gemalto’s LinqUs solution for Mobile Money Transfer, which comprises of the server, user application, as well as system integration services.

The offering titled as the OneWallet service, works on 100% of the handsets and will enable all NetOne subscribers to perform secure and convenient money transfer using their mobile phone.

Visa is implementing a new money transfer service to allow customers send funds in real-time to other cards using the VisaNet network. For the first time the service was activated by Russia's largest payment kiosk operator, 1st Processing Bank (QIWI Group), and Ukraine's largest bank, PrivatBank earlier this week. Now Visa plans international roll-out.

Using the service customers just specify their Visa card number to initiate the payment. It eliminates any need to fill out different forms and give away routing information such as bank codes and branch addresses.

MoneyGram International has partnered with Iris Wireless to provide prepaid mobile top-up services to allow Filipinos living in the United States to make money transfers to their friends and families in the Philippines. Under the terms of the agreement MoneyGram will enable US consumers to reload cell phone minutes to their associates in Philippines who use Iris Wireless’ partner Globe Telecom as their service provider.

MoneyGram International has partnered with Visa to launch MoneyGram's first cash-to-Visa account program for remittances from the United States to Mexico.

Under the program consumers will be able to use any of the 35,000 MoneyGram locations in the U.S. to quickly and reliably send funds directly to eligible Visa accounts in Mexico. Recipients in Mexico receive the funds directly to their Visa credit, debit, or prepaid accounts. Then they can withdraw the cash from Visa's global network of millions of merchant acceptance locations and ATMs.

One of the largest money remitting services MoneyGram  has announced expansion of its presence in Asia by adding 4,200 new locations to its network in India through Bank of Baroda, Axis Bank and Vijaya Bank. Currently MoneyGram operates through in India over 30,000 locations.

Global money transfer services company Coinstar has signed an agreement with state owned bank of Philippines Land Bank to develop remittances business from Italy.

MoneyGram International and State Savings Bank of Russian Federation (Sberbank) announced that now 8,000 bank branches will begin offering MoneyGram’s international money transfer service throughout Russia. Launching the service with 8,000 new locations in one day is a significant technological and business breakthrough and is a first for an agent of this magnitude.