Daryeel Magazine
In the years following the attacks of 11 September 2001, it is not surprising that Western security forces and authorities clamped down hard on the money transfer industry.
Fearful that some remittances being sent to countries in eastern Africa, the Middle East and South Asia could be being used to fund terrorist activities, a number of smaller money transfer companies were shut down.
While completely understandable from a security point of view, the knock-on effect was that many innocent people in places such as Somalia suddenly found that it was much more difficult to receive vital funds from expat relatives living in the West.
This was money they needed to put food on the table, or clothe their children, or keep a roof above their heads.
One man who was increasingly aware of the problem was Ismail Ahmed. He was born and raised in Somaliland, the autonomous northern part of Somalia, before being educated in the UK after winning a World Bank scholarship.
In his early 30s at the time, Mr Ahmed was an expert in remittances and the money transfer industry, having focused on the subjects while doing a PhD in development economics at Imperial College in London.
Turning his expertise into a business opportunity, and wishing to help, he started to advise a number of smaller money transfer firms, both in the UK and overseas, on how they could best meet the more stringent security rules.
Such was his success in doing so that in 2004 the United Nations Development Programme – the UN agency which aims to improve conditions in the developing world – asked him to join their team which was trying to tackle the same problem.
Yet after an unhappy time at the UN, which saw him quit after becoming a whistleblower to fraud and corruption, Mr Ahmed determined to launch his own money transfer business.
He recognised that if he created such a firm that was as digitally-based as possible, he could both be as security conscious as possible, and keep costs down enough to enable him to offer substantially lower transaction fees than the industry leaders.
So the idea for his new company, WorldRemit, was born.
No agents
To understand how WorldRemit works, it is necessary to look at the long-established business model for sending remittances by money transfer firms.
Typically this involves person A in a rich country paying cash to an agent of the transfer firm, be it a bank branch or accredited corner shop.
The money is then transferred to a nation in the developing world, where person B goes to another agent of the transfer firm, again typically a bank or shop, or bureau de change, and then withdraws the money in cash. If the money is sent to a bank, it doesn’t go directly into a person’s account.
This is the model that global leaders Western Union and MoneyGram, and their hundreds of smaller rivals, have followed for decades.
The security concern in this post 9/11 world is whether this system of money transfer is at risk of abuse, such as people using false identification, or trying to launder money.
It is a concern which has cost the big players rather a lot of money in fines. In 2010 Western Union was fined $94m (£60m) by the state of Arizona for not doing enough to prevent money laundering by Mexican drugs gangs, while in 2012 MoneyGram had to pay a $100m penalty.
Then last year, UK bank Barclays announced that it was closing the accounts of all but 19 of its 165 clients in the remittance transfer business.
Source: BBC
