High-tech advances such as cyber currency bitcoin and its blockchain transfer technology are creating opportunities to modernize the way vital remittances are transferred across borders, but strict banking regulations and banks’ unwillingness to work in “risky” sectors threaten to make it more difficult for many to send money home, experts say.
The Sustainable Development Goals have recognized the key importance of remittances for global development. Goal 10 includes reducing the average cost of sending money from the current average of 7.4 percent of the sum being transferred, to below 3 percent.
Money which migrants send back to developing countries now officially totals approximately $440 billion every year, three times higher than official aid flows, according to the World Bank. Experts say the market could actually be worth far more considering the value of transfers which flow through unrecorded channels.