GVG’s e-Remittance solution was specifically developed to account for all remittance transactions and ensure the comprehensive collection of levies associated with such transactions It also allows governments and the relevant authorities to monitor the market and provides them with updated statistics and information needed to inform the policy-making process related to remittances.

In response to the growing need for an efficient and appropriate regulatory system for remittance transactions, Global Voice Group has launched e-Remittances for the centralised control and management of all remittance transactions.

The World Bank estimates that in 2015 alone, a high volume of transactions—more than USD 534 billion—flowed to emerging countries.  There is thus tremendous financial potential for leveraging these transactions in this rapidly growing market, but there is also risk.  Without a regulatory system to monitor the remittance transactions, it becomes difficult to:

• Authenticate any transaction
• Trace and verify each remittance transaction
• Ensure that regulated exchange rates are applied

This leaves the remittance market wide open to fraud, money laundering and the financing of terrorism.
Against this backdrop, the GVG e-Remittance solution was specifically developed for the centralised control and management of all the data relating to the transactions—making all transactions traceable, compliant and justifiable. 

The solution provides the authorities with effective tools to:

• Obtain valuable market and business intelligence to feed the money transfer industry’s policy-making process
• Leverage remittances as a sustainable source of innovative funding for development for government projects and development needs
• Detect and deter fraud
• Implement appropriate incentives to increase compliance with current and/or future regulations pertaining to remittances
• Implement incentives to increase the revenue generated by special levies on remittance transactions.

The e-Remittance solution brings transparency to the financial transaction and enables an audit-trail to be established for any transaction.

Jean Geoffrion, Chief Technical Officer, who was recently involved in the development of the e-Remittance solution at GVG expands on how this specialised and sophisticated technology helps secure the new source of revenue: “GVG has the necessary technology and world presence to ensure that the levy is properly applied to each transaction and to give government a clear view of all real time, transactions while they are taking place.”
“Our strategy is to implement our system without it being intrusive in the remittance service provider operation. For it to be as painless as possible to implement for all existing players in their normal business process. We decided to create an external service for the implementation of eRemittance that can be easily used by all remittance service providers, without them having to change anything in their existing system. The e-Remittance solution allows for a centralised monitoring and management of all transactions. This brings about more transparency to the process and enables an audit-trail to be established for any transaction.”

Geoffrion reiterates that it is of utmost importance that this type of project is completely transparent.  “It is for this reason that we publish information to the general public about the amounts of the income retrieved and how these funds are utilised. It can be used as a means of communication with the public and to provide transparency to them—the government can let them know how much money was raised by the levy on the remittance transaction and which government development programme is being supported by the amount collected.”

However, catching the attention of the public and ensuring they fully understand the progress of such a project can be a challenge but is vitally important.  Thus we suggest linking the e-remittance project to a lottery.  This creates buy-in for the levy and makes the participants feel they are contributing to a worthy cause. 

Additionally, when a televised lottery draw takes place it creates a captive platform ensuring public awareness is created.  The lottery also acts as an incentive to encourage customers to claim their receipt and make sure they are given their STN number which is used for the lottery.  This does not cost the consumer anything extra but it may be a lucky winning ticket. It is also an incentive against fraud and non-compliance.

“Ultimately this solution allows emerging countries to capitalise on the potential revenues from remittance transactions through the collection of special levies. These small levies when aggregated, can be an important and sustainable source of revenue used to develop any targeted socio-economic sector in an emerging country needing development funds,” concludes Geoffrion.