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Lucky Money Inc., a long established money transfer company specialising in sending money to the Phillipines has announced expansion in to the South American market.

In partnering with TransferOrbit, they will have access to a network of 17,000 agents across the continent.

"Having gained the trust and confidence of our existing client base, we have decided the time was right to broaden our reach and provide the same fast, secure and reliable remittance services to the Latin American community", said Ruell Medina, COO of Lucky Money.

The full press release is available at Business Wire.

MoneyGram International, the worlds second largest money remittance company annouced its first quarter 2008 results.

Despite a 23 percent increase in revenue to $262.8 million, a loss of $307.3 million was recorded due to changes in their investment portfolio.

More details of their results are available at StreetInsider.

MoneyGram has announced that it has signed a deal with Imperial Bank in Kenya to increase its network of Kenyan outlets.  They already have a deal with Co-operative Bank of Kenya that has given them a foot hold in the market.  With this new deal, MoneyGram are hoping to offer their services to a larger portion of the population.

World Bank statistics show money transfer is a growing business, with approximately $1.3 billion being sent to Kenya in 2007, which was twice the average sent per year between 2000 and 2005 which was around $581 million.

Kenya is now the second largest recepient of remittances in Africa, closely following Nigeria which annually receives $3.3 billion.  In third place is Sudan with $1.2 billion per year.

Idea Cellular Ltd of India and Etisalat of the UAE are partnering to pilot a mobile phone based money transfer service to Kerala, India.

"The service will enable expat Indian subscribers of Etisalat in [The] Gulf to transfer money to any designated bank account of an Idea subscriber in Kerala", said the Chief Marketing Officer of Idea, Pradeep Shrivastav.

The pilot is to be coordinated by Tata Communications who will act as the hub for services, and HSBC India will be used for the actual transfer of monies.

"The subscribers of Etisalat will authorise the payment through mobile wallet service", said Allan Chan, Executive VP of Tata Communications.

"We are looking at same day transfer of funds, provided the sender gives authorisation by a desired deadline to enable us to complete all regulatory checks before we transfer funds", said the Deputy CEO of HSBC Neelesh Heredia.

Pricing for the service hasn't been decided yet, but it is expected to be less than existing money transfer services according to an Idea representative.

More about this news item can be found at The Hindu newspaper.

A new report from Celent has concluded that money transfer via mobile phone networks is set to be the future for transferring money.

It is estimated that in 2006, $450 billion was transferred by ex-pats back to their home countries, a number that is set to increase with increased migration.

Traditionally money transfer has occured through money transfer agencies.  But now with new mobile phone based technologies available, the trend is set to change.  Mobile phones offer much more flexibility in where and when money can be transferred.

Money transfer companies require that an agent be available on either end of the transaction.  This has generally meant that beneficiaries have had to travel many miles to their nearest agent.  With the flexibility of the mobile phone networks, this money can be received more directly.

The report also said that the larger money transfer companies such as Western Union and Money Gram will be able to adapt to this emerging market, but the smaller operators will get squeezed out as they do not have the resources to roll out these advanced systems.

The report ignored the fact that smaller companies are able to participate in mobile phone based transfers using software from vendors such as RemitONE who will be rolling out these features shortly.

Globe Telecom in the Philippines through its subsidiary G-Xchange, Inc. (GXI) today announced that it is to provide a cheap and convenient money transfer service for ex-pats sending money back home.

It is estimated that over $14 billion was sent to the Philippines by overseas workers in 2007, representing 14% of the GDP.

Filipinos will now be able to receive money as well as top-up their telephones and pay bills at a network of 6000 GCASH outlets around the country.

Money can be sent from abroad simply using text messaging.

Rizza Maniego-Eala, GXI President, said "... enables leading mobile operators and financial institutions worldwide... to immediately access the more than 20 Mio Globe Telecom subscribers as recipients for mobile money transfers."

Emirates Post in partnership with India Post have launched the Express Money Order (EMO) service to India.

The service was launched in the presence of Ibrahim Bin Karam, CEO of Emirates Post, and Lakshmi Narasimhan, Minister of Communications and Information Technology, India.  The launch was inaugurated with the first customer in UAE sending money to his wife in Chennai.  Once the transaction was processed at the counter in UAE, an SMS containing a secret code was received immediately by the customers wife in India.  This was shown to the teller in the Post Office and the money was received.

Mr. Bin Karam said that they had partnered with India Post because "has the world's largest network of post offices, penetrating every corner of the country".  This will allow money to be sent cheaply to even the most remotest areas, a service that isn't possible through normal channels.

"The Universal Postal Union systems are being used to transport the details of the transactions to give security and peace of mind to the users of the service", said Mr. Bin Karam.

The International Money Order service works in two ways, either a Post Office branch can be designated to for collection of monies, or for an additional fee small transfers can be delivered directly to the beneficiaries residence.

India has the worlds largest network of post offices numbering 155,333, and having outlets in even the most remotest of areas.

A more detailed story is available at AME Info.

A recent poll has shown a down-turn in the numbers of Latin American immigrants who are sending money back home to their families.  According to the poll, only 50% of Latin Americans are sending money compared to 73% when the survey was conducted in 2006.

There could be a myriad of factors influencing this figure, but it is generally agreed that these are the first signs of the current credit crisis hitting the money transfer business as more money is directed at mortgage payments.

40% of those surveyed were illegal immigrants so the survey took in a broad spectrum of the Latin American population of the United States.

One highlight of the survey was that Latin American residents of California are planning to increase the amount of money they send abroad this year by 11%.  On average 15 payments are sent annually, each with an average value of $325.

More information about this survey can be found at the Los Angeles Times.

Money transfer is a booming business in the Gulf according to figures from the World Bank.

New figures prepared for the Money Transfers Dubai Conference show that the UAE alone accounts for $27billion of this amount.  It is projected that this figure is set to grow by 20 per cent per year.

World Bank figures show that, though officially the money transfer business turns over $500 billion a year, the true figure is nearer twice as much as money is sent through more unofficial methods such as hawala.

Recent advances in money transfer via mobile phone networks has seen an increase in the use of official channels and this trend is set to continue.

Globally the main source of money transferred is from the US, followed by other wealthy Western countries.  India is currently the largest recipient of money transfers at $27billion per year, closely followed by China with $25.7billion.

More on this story can also be found at the Khaleej Times.