Safe SA to Mozambique money transfers soon

MOZAMBICAN nationals living in South Africa will soon be able to send money home securely after Standard Bank on Friday announced that it had entered into a partnership with Mukuru to facilitate money transfers between the two countries.

The head of personal and business banking at Standard Bank Mozambique, Victor Jardim, said the initiative would help the nearly 800 000 Mozambicans residing in South Africa, because they would be able to transfer money to their families securely.

“Many fellow citizens have sent money through informal channels, out of the banking circuit, which involves many risks, as well as many having lost their money, leaving their families in a bad situation,” Jardim said.

Mukuru is a South African-headquartered company that specialises in money transfer services.

Amounts transferred from Mukuru in South Africa can be credited to current accounts at Standard Bank in Mozambique or collected at no cost from a branch of the bank, thus making Standard Bank the first banking partner of Mukuru in Mozambique.

The fee for a transfer is a fixed rate of 10 percent, which is a much lower than the average of 16.3 percent on money transfers between the two countries.

Mukuru said people who wanted to make a transfer needed to register with a valid identity document.

To collect money at Standard Bank, recipients need to taketheir identity document or passport and have the confirmation SMS from Mukuru. No fee is charged to the recipient.

The Standard Bank-Makuru partnership follows the bank’s successful tie-in with Moneygram in Lesotho, Swaziland and Namibia.

Standard Bank and Moneygram have also launched a deposit facility for transfers from European countries to Nigeria.

A string of companies are hoping to stake a claim in the lucrative cross-border money transfer market by cutting prices and becoming more transparent.

The World Bank said the fees for cross-border remittances average 7.45 percent globally, while it can cost an additional 15 percent to send money from the United States or Europe to Africa. The fees to remit money between African countries can be astonishing.