Money transfers are an essential payments service for any bank that wants to play in the cash space without the high cost of cash handling. What can banks do to ensure their solution meets their customers' expectations? 

Cash is the heartbeat of South Africa’s payments ecosystem and therefore too significant to overlook or replace in a bank’s payments strategy. Money transfer solutions act as a digital vehicle to transfer cash and have reduced the friction, safety and cost of carrying physical cash for consumers. Consequently, it has quickly become a staple payment method in South Africa. 

The rising demand has saturated the market with money transfer and cash voucher solutions offered by banks, retailers, mobile network operators, and payment service providers (PSP). Banks need to provide a market-leading money transfer solution in order to stand out to users and be competitive in the industry.

This can be achieved by focusing on your user experience and accessibility.

Facilitate transactions with the unbanked

Money transfers have a peer-to-peer (P2P) component for sending money between accounts. They also function as a payment service for account holders to transact with unbanked citizens and foreign nationals. 

Approximately 15% of South Africans are unbanked, and foreign nationals face barriers to opening bank accounts due to insufficient documentation. Therefore, being competitive involves facilitating cash-in and cash-out transactions between your account holders and the unbanked. When you simplify these transactions for your account holders, your payments portfolio becomes more financially inclusive, potentially increasing deposits and driving revenue growth. 

Provide a strong retail network

ATMs have long been a convenient feature for cash withdrawals. However as security continues to be a concern and banks reduce their ATM footprint to reduce overheads, money transfer users have fewer options to deposit and withdraw. Retailers close the gap by providing more accessible and convenient cash-in and cash-out options for users. 

A comprehensive retail network includes both tier-1 retailers as well as a network of smaller merchants that serve rural areas where larger retailers are unavailable. By permeating both metropolitan and remote areas, your solution becomes the most flexible and competitive choice for users to send money.  

Quickly and easily expand your reach

Initially, you may want to focus your efforts on integrating with one major retailer to support your solution but this approach risks leaving you behind the market. Bank account holders, particularly those with multiple banking relationships, choose solutions that have a broader and more accessible network. 

Scaling rapidly is inextricably dependent on the systems and resources you choose to build your solution. While building a proprietary solution is an option, it can slow your speed to market. Additionally, allocating essential resources to a technical build risks diverting your focus from strengthening your solution’s value proposition. 

Deploy and scale at speed with a trusted industry partner

If you’re offering money transfer services, provide a complete solution. This includes:

• P2P payments between bank accounts.
• Cash-in and cash-out cash vouchers to transact with the unbanked.
• A true omni-channel experience supporting transactions through your bank app, USSD, ATMs, retail POS, and internet banking. 

Electrum’s next-generation technology Money Transfer solution is market-proven and built to connect banks with leading retailers and merchants across South Africa. 

Expand your reach, have control of fees, generate revenue, and optimise resources by implementing a competitive cash voucher issuing and distribution solution powered by our turnkey, cloud-native payments engine. 

Learn more about cash voucher issuing and distribution for banks or contact us today to discuss how we can help you.