AlipayHK, GCash Get Together on Remittances
Remittances are a big part of the mobile payments market, thanks to the sheer number of users sending cash from one country to another with a mobile payments interface. While most people think of remittances as going from the United States to other countries, there’s more than that going on, and that’s demonstrated by the latest move from AlipayHK. It’s teamed up with GCash to offer up its own breed of remittances transfer, backed up by blockchain technology.
With the blockchain technology in place, the end result is a smoother-flowing process that makes remittance delivery go much faster. The process is more transparent, and actually demands fewer resources to be carried out.
Alipay and GCash’s system can offer transfers between Hong Kong and the Philippines on a round-the-clock basis, with a “competitive exchange rate.” Fees are set to be lower than normal, and a three-month trial period comes without fees of any sort.
Alipay Payment Services chairman and group co-managing director of CK Hutchison Holdings Canning Fok noted “This cooperation with GCash to bring remittance to the Philippines using the new technology is the first step and there are many other places Hong Kong people need to remit money. I’m happy to see that the AlipayHK team is hard at work to expand this service to more people, bringing us closer to our families and friends with a cheaper and quicker solution.”
It’s interesting to see remittances going on in another direction, and it’s not surprising, either. While Central American and South American nations might be interested in routing cash from the US and Canada, Southeast Asian nations might have a greater interest in cash from Hong Kong. So Alipay had an excellent opportunity to step in on this front and provide a service that people in the region clearly wanted. Using blockchain and mobile systems to carry it all out is just the icing on the cake.
Seeing mobile payments put to work in new and unusual ways is always worth checking out, and here, Alipay and GCash are showing us one comparatively new way to do so. It’s likely to be a hit in the region, and though it won’t be long before competitors step in, Alipay and GCash may have the closest thing yet to the first-mover advantage.