Ukraine One of the Biggest Money Transfer Countries

Ukrainian workers in Europe transfer many Euros back home to their relatives and the amount is increasing. News out of Ukraine is that the tendency of Ukrainian workers in Europe to use electronic money transfers will increase during 2007.

The entry of large money transfer companies will increase competition in the money transfer business and will increase awareness of new money transfer solutions through abundant advertising.

As of now the primary means of money transfer is through existing banking methods which is the traditional wiring of money from one bank branch to another. So far there is not much use of stored value cards or card-to-card transfers. International Personnel Management, LLC (IPM) is positioned to change that.

What is SWIFT?

SWIFT stands for "Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication."

In relation to international transactions and remittances, SWIFT is an electronic messaging network of banks (majority), depositories, securities broker-dealers and non-bank corporations. SWIFT was formed as a banking transactional messaging network but has grown and is growing into a network that can be used in addition to other systems for transfers relating to the international remittance market.

To know what SWIFT is and and how it works it is beneficial to reference an overall description of SWIFT at the 9to5andOtherwise.com site.

Click part 1 and part 2.

The Need for Banking the "Unbankable"

In our increasingly digital world there are many people who need a credit or debit card of some sort to participate in or do business. Most hotels now will not permit someone to stay as a guest unless they have some sort of bank card for the hotel to scan.

Gone are the days of having a tab at a local merchant. Merchants demand and customers need an instant method for conducting business transactions.

Another use for debit and stored value cards is to permit people to essentially carry a bank account in their wallet. Employers now have the option of direct depositing pay checks directly to the employee's card. Stored value cards now actually have a bank routing number in addition to the account number so that money can be wired to the card.

Money can also be transfered by the cardholder from one card to another card anywhere in the world. One can see the potential for unbanked immigrants in many countries around the world sending money back to their home countries. These card-to-card transactions are much less expensive to the user than using older methods such as wiring money through Western Union.