BBVA and other companies are entering the mobile money transfer business.
Spanish bank BBVA has taken a leap into the mobile banking market as it launched app named Tuyyo, available on iOS and Android.
Tuyyo –spelled out as “tú y yo” (meaning you and I in English) – is focused on the remittances from the U.S. to Latin America and the Caribbean, a 73 billion-dollar annual market.
The app allows users to send money and allow recipients to pick up their cash at any Bancomer ATM across Mexico without bank card or account.
Funds can also be sent directly to a bank account at BBVA´s partner banks for easier and quicker transactions.
A social component has been added to the “Tuyyo” app as a photo and personal message can be shared vía Whatsapp, e-mail or SMS as well as voice and video message in a way to ensure money operations.
“Tuyyo´s” first transfers will only include foreign exchange costs but will not charge a fee, however, afterwards a flat fee of $5.49 will be added to the service.
For the future, the BBVA app plans to add insurance support and micro-financing so clients can also experiment with paying bills through the wireless service.
As for Derek White, Global Head of Customer and Clients Solutions for BBVA, he said “People feel a strong sense of duty to help out their families (…) it is one way to say, ‘We still love you even if we can´t be together right now.”
Money-transfer: A growing market
According to a report from the GSMA Association, a mobile-global network operator, 2016 was a milestone year for the mobile money industry, as two-thirds of low and middle-income countries have mobile money available.
It is proved through the index that 43 million transactions are done each day, as half a billion of mobile accounts are accounted for across the world, contrasting to the 86.8 million mobile money accounts registered in 2011.
The GSMA information shows migrants sending in 2016 and 2017 an estimated 581 billion-dollars in remittances to their families—three times the volume of official aid flows.
The competition to take on
Although there’s wide-reaching skepticism about security, mobile transactions are a big part of both jobs and home.
And coming down to the competition, it´s all about efficiency and quickness, and here are 5 competitions “Tuyyo” from BBVA will have to take on:
- Venmo charges just a 3 percent fee for credit cards and boasts a “bank-grade” security system, so no do not worry about hackers.
- Facebook Messenger enabled its app to allow sending money. You just set up your debit or credit card, type the amount of money and push “pay”.
- PayPal, one of the oldest money transfer applications available.
- Google Wallet, which allows you to pay at any retail store that accepts tap-to-pay, or Debit Mastercards within the U.S.
- Western Union app, which grants you the ability to send it to over 200 countries and territories.
Mobile money has redefined the economics of banking the poor by leveraging wide-reaching agent networks, affordable feature phones, and mobile network connectivity to serve mass markets in a commercially sustainable way.
This is a change yet to evolve even more.
