Earlier I was do some thinking and it occurred to me that there’s a lot of overlooked potential for the atms in the remittance industry.
Now, before I go any further, I must say that this is mostly brainstorming and there might be better ways to do things, so feel free to contribute.
Anyways, most of my coworkers are Somali, so I’ll use them as an example.
Ok, so it’s pay day and Mohammed wants to send his father Ali, who is back home in Somalia, some money, so he could just go to a safex atm in the US and converts his dollars to safex and send Ali some safex who then withdraws dollars from the safex atm located at Ahmed’s store.
Now some ideas to possibly improve said remittance process. This is the section where ideas may sound good in my head, but end up sounding stupid, so feel free to pick it apart.
1.Automate the process/make it end user friendly and set up for sending safex cash, rather than just converting for yourself: Make a special market transaction, similar to a void market that’s basically functions as an address that can only be withdrawn to the attached(receiver’s) account or through an atm. The address(being more like a market listing/escrow than a safex address) could be named and given a pin(either chosen by the user or randomly generated) to add ease for the users. Or it could create a hidden market listing under the seller with an escrow for the funds and a randomly generated pin, so the receiver could go to the nearest atm and enter their account name and the generated pin to withdraw.
2.Now number 1 might seem unnecessary, but it sets things up for number 2. Price protection. Add a small optional market fee, so that the money from that transaction is exchanged at the same rate it was sent, regardless of price fluctuations. This is one of the reasons for sending as a market transaction as opposed to directly to a wallet. Possibly price protection would be limited to a certain time frame, maybe a week to a month or on a tiered percentage plan to prevent people from abusing it as a safe harbor if prices dropped for some reason.
Now in theory, Mohammed just got his pay check and sent a portion to Ali as safex cash who withdraws dollars for the atm at at Ahmed’s general store. Now Ahmed can turn around with his safex cash and buy more inventory from the safex market place, which he turns around and sells to Ahmed for the dollars Mohammed sent him.
I hope that’s not to long, confusing, and/or stupid. Basically, i think if streamlined and used as an automated western union, the safex atms could reach beyond the developed world and carve out a decent chunk of the remittance industry.
