Singapore bank Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation (OCBC Bank)
has partnered with China’s sole payment card issuer, China UnionPay
(CUP), to launch EasiRemit, the first real-time remittance service
to China.
Running on the infrastructure of Singapore payments service
provider Network For Electronic Transfers, EasiRemit will enable
Chinese expatriates to remit money to their home country via more
than 400 OCBC ATMs in Singapore and OCBC’s mobile phone banking
service from anywhere in the world.
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According to OCBC Bank, the real-time nature of EasiRemit
enables beneficiaries to have immediate access to the cash remitted
instead of the usual three to five days’ waiting time that
conventional remittance services typically require.
EasiRemit’s first adopters are four CUP member banks: Bank of
Shanghai, Dongguan Rural Credit Cooperatives Union, Fujian Rural
Credit Union and Hunan Rural Credit Union. The four banks have a
combined total of 7.5 million card users in China and those
receiving remittances via EasiRemit cards will be able to withdraw
cash at about 500,000 CUP ATMs globally and over 7,000 bank
branches in China.
A number of other major Chinese banks will soon be included in
the EasiRemit programme. These include Agricultural Bank of China,
Bank of Communications and Industrial and Commercial Bank of
China.
OCBC Bank has also announced plans to extend the EasiRemit
service to other countries to serve Singapore’s rapidly growing
expatriate population. The bank cited data from Singapore’s
Ministry of Manpower revealing that in 2007 foreign employment rose
by 144,500 to 900,800, or one-third of all workers in
Singapore.
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By GlobalDataOCBC Bank has over 460 branches and representative offices in 13
other countries and territories: Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand,
Vietnam, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Brunei, Myanmar, Japan, Korea,
Australia, the UK and the US.
