Afrimarket

Afrimarket is an innovative Money Transfer operator with a cash-to-goods approach, helping African migrants remit dedicated funds to Africa at a fraction of current money transfer costs. Afrimarket enables African migrants to send dedicated funds to their families back home at a fraction of the price of traditional money transfer giants. In 2012, African migrant workers sent nearly US $60 billion in remittances to support their families. African migrants face two challenges when remitting funds. - First, the cost. Africans pay more to send money home than any other migrant group. In fact, the average cost of sending money to Africa is almost 12 percent, much higher than the global average of 8.96 percent. - Second, part of the money that manages to make it home is not used for its intended purpose – rather, it can be diverted or lost to other needs deemed by the recipient to be more important. Afrimarket allows migrants to remit dedicated funds at specific point of sales where they can buy food, medicine or pay for tuition fees. Cutting out money transfer agents and other middlemen in favor of mobile phones, the Afrimarket platform is able to drive down fees for remittance senders, and thereby increase the amount of money that reaches the intended recipient. To send dedicated funds via Afrimarket, migrant workers simply need to log into their online Afrimarket account (soon to expand to brick-and-mortar agents in sending countries), enter their payment information, specify the recipients’ phone number, choose a specific point-of-sale for funds to be received, and click send. What distinguishes Afrimarket from other mobile remittance platforms is what happens on the recipient end. Through the platform, money is transferred from the sender's Afrimarket digital account in the form of credit (rather than cash), which can only be redeemed at designated point-of-sales, and used for specific purposes.

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