United Nations Hosts Awards to Discover International Money Transfer Innovations

February 27, 2018 By: Payment Week

February 26, 2018, UNITED STATES – The RemTECH Awards 2018 needs groundbreaking products, services, research, and projects in international payments submitted before March 30th.

Winners will be recognized at the World Bank Group, IFAD, and Central Bank of Malaysia hosted Global Forum on Remittances, Investment and Development (GFRID) in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on May 8th. Travel expenses will be paid for, in part by Blockchain Industries, Inc. GFRID is committed to raising awareness, facilitating dialogue, and promoting cooperation between entrepreneurs, global organizations, and governments on the contributions of migrant remittances (personal international money transfers) to world economic development.

In alignment, The Remittance Technology Awards (The RemTECH Awards) and in partnership with MAMSB spotlights the role of technology in achieving GFRID’s mission. Part of the awards voting process will actually score entries using a blockchain-based platform developed with Horizon State technology and in collaboration with Yokip Consulting. The tally on blockchain will verify that the voting occurred independently and provide an auditable account of the scoring, while keeping voters anonymous to foster unbiased results. Winners will be announced April 17th.

The influence of technology in cross-border payments cannot be ignored. The RemTECH Awards Director, Hugo Cuaves-Mohr, estimates 2017 volumes of personal and business international money transfers sent using virtual currencies, like Bitcoin, by the cross-border payments industry hit $182 billion — nearly one-fifth of all international transfers conducted by the industry ($1.03 trillion). Particularly in regions where money transfers are difficult to facilitate, virtual currencies provide a welcomed alternative to the traditional banking network. Other technologies and uses of blockchain are solving to the increasingly stringent compliance demands, rethinking business models as margins shrink, and the demands of users who either embrace or are left behind by digitization.

Money transfer innovations address a vital humanitarian need. The World Bank estimates remittances to low- and middle-income countries, alone, will grow by 3.4 percent in 2018, to $466 billion, which exceeds the latest report on total annual Official Development Assistance (ODA) in 2016 at $159 billion. The funds pay for healthcare, housing, food, education, and business investments of the senders’ families abroad. Among major remittance recipients, India retains its top spot, with expected to total $65 billion this year, followed by China, the Philippines, Mexico, and Nigeria. These countries have long relied on remittances over human aid provided by high-income nations. In the Philippines, remittances contributes to 10 percent of their GDP. Furthermore, in the past years, remittances have shown to be more stable than private capital flow into the low- and middle-income countries.

The RemTECH Awards is developed by the International Money Transfer Conferences (IMTC) to highlight the role of technology in world economic development, market ecosystem diversification, and improvements in transparency, speed, cost, and reliability of the cross-border payments industry. The applicants and judges represent a humble part of such incremental improvements that ultimately facilitate connection and stability within countries and societies — a feat rarely given recognition.