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Kenya: Citi in Deal to Channel Cash From Diaspora
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Business Daily (Nairobi)
7 May 2008
Posted to the web 7 May 2008
Geoffrey Irungu
Citi Bank has secured an agreement with St George's Healthcare NHS Trust to offer the "Remit as You Earn" (RAYE) service to the Trust's employees.
RAYE is a means of sending money overseas on a regular basis and is targeted at the diaspora. Citi will roll out the service in the next few months. In a Press release, Citi said it had approached other public and private sector organisations for a similar deal.
RAYE is based on QuikRemit, a remittance platform with distribution and foreign exchange capabilities spanning more than 90 countries.
It targets countries such as India, Pakistan, the Philippines, Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya as well as cash and non-cash delivery methods. The PayQuik team joined Citi in February, this year.
Citi says RAYE will support wider UK Government objectives on development as the new service should bring significant economic savings to users, which would directly benefit the receivers of the money in developing countries.
The statement said RAYE will reduce the total cost of remittance by as much as 53 per cent, or £130 per year for an employee who earns £2,000 a month in the UK and who sends 15 per cent of his salary back home as an example.
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It said a major hindrance to determining what is sent from the diaspora relates to the many unofficial channels used. "A second-order positive economic impact of RAYE would be the creation of an official channel for workers to send money home.
This new offering should help them to reduce the amounts they send through unofficial channels," said the statement from the UNDP communications office and the UK's Department for International Development.
"Despite the lack of quantitative information, we believe the economic benefits of channelling money through formal channels would be substantial," it said.
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