Western Union expands with currency remittance boom

Hiran H.Senewiratne

EXPANSION: The global money transferring service provider Western Union (WU) is planning to expand agent

 locations in Sri Lanka. This is because the country’s foreign remittances have shown tremendous growth during last few years, Western Union Director Marketing- South Asia, Suvodeep Das said.

“Last year nearly Rs 241 billion worth of foreign currency remittances came into Sri Lanka and our aim is for Sri Lankans to remit money from anywhere in the world” Das said.

Sri Lanka has shown a 20 per cent year on year remarkable growth during the last few years.

This prompted them to increase their agent locations islandwide, he said.

At present this service is being offered through more than 1100 agent locations. With the increase of inward remittances we are gradually increasing service locations through our principal agents, he said.

Currently, they have tied-up with three main principal institutions including the People’s Bank, MMBL Money Transferring Services and the NDB Bank.

Sri Lanka is poised to be one of the growing markets in the region. Therefore we consider Sri Lanka as one of the key markets in the South Asian region, he said.

At present more than 50 per cent of foreign remittances come from Middle Eastern countries, which accounted for more than Rs 121 billion, Das said.

Western Union has appointed cricketer Muttaiah Muralitharan as the brand ambassador.

The world’s global remittances market is US$ 269 billion. WU dominates a 17 per cent remittance market share globally, he said.

It has more than 305,000 service locations all over the country spread across 200 countries in the world.

It is a US based company listed in the New York Stock Exchange as well.