Western Union, the leading American money transfer firm, has entered into an alliance with ING Vysya Bank for inward money transfer.
The service will initially be provided at 100 ING Vysya Bank branches but will be extended to al the 480 locations of the bank by March.
Western Union is the global leader in money transfers and prides itself for being able to make a money transfer in less than ten minutes, said Anil Kapur, regional director for south Asia.
Bart Hellemans, the CEO of ING Vysya Bank, explained the rise of Western Union by pointing out that banks were not very good at transfering money to retail recipients.
The benefit from this arrangement for the bank was the fee income and the ability to acquire customers through this service, particularly NRIs.
He added that the bank, which had recently come under the control of ING Bank, would go in more and more for third party services which would leverage its network.
Kapur added that Western Union, which sent the maximum inward remittance in India to Punjab so far, was looking at new internet based services so as to acquire business from techiees from Andhra and Karnataka who were working overseas.
Western Union currently has less than single digit market share in India but its business nearly doubled last year and is expected to do so for the next few years.
This, Kapur said, was because of the company
