Western Union to strengthen presence

Western Union, leading global money transfer service provider, looks to continuously grow its presence in Bangladesh by providing different options to the customers to send and receive remittance here.

"Bangladesh is very important remittance market for us…. Our goal is to continue growing customers' services and our presence in Bangladesh," Kiran Shetty, Regional Vice President, South Asia, Western Union, told the FE in an interview recently.

Mr Shetty was in Dhaka to announce the launching of its new service -- Direct-to-Bank (D2B) -- at a city hotel.

Bangladesh's about US$ 14 billion remittance market is the 7th largest one in the world, the Western Union's senior official said, and shared his company's business strategy that it wanted to create more options for the consumers to send and receive remittance more expediently in Bangladesh.

Regarding the newly launched service -- D2B, Mr Shetty said that it is a new option for remittance transfer that will help the Bangladeshi expatriates send money directly to bank accounts in Bangladesh, facilitating greater access to financial services.

Initially, the service is available from Malaysia; the Western Union will offer it from other countries soon.

Under its existing service, the consumers can continue sending money from 200 countries and receive it 'in cash' from different locations in Bangladesh. Side by side the earlier service, the D2B product will enable them to send the same money from 200 countries to directly to bank accounts in Bangladesh.

 "The D2B service was launched in partnership with the Bank Asia; you can now credit any bank accounts in Bangladesh through the Bangladesh Electronic Funds Transfer Network (BEFTN)," the WU official said.

In a query, Mr Shetty said that Western Union has very good share in fund transfer service in the US$ 14 billion Bangladesh remittance market; however, he restrained from disclosing specific amount or percentage of its market share here.

 "Our strategy and vision is to create more options for the consumers; we continue working on our products and services for the consumers in Bangladesh (to increase the market share)," he said.

Operation of the Western Union remains in all the 64 districts in Bangladesh; from its different locations across the country, you can get cash (under existing service), he said.

About the security in its remittance transfer, Mr Shetty said, "One million transactions of the Western Union took place a day across the world. So our services are very secured and compliant."

Regarding the company's business strategy to compete with other market players in Bangladesh, he said that they don't see it from the competitors' perspective rather from the consumers' perspective; "So, our idea is to work and continue evaluating the needs of the consumers."