Most of the digital remittance operators claim they are at least 45% cheaper than physical networks.
Even through digital, remittance remains deeply dependent on third parties: banks are still validating money transfers from senders to the remittance operator and again to recipients.
Finally, bitcoin technology has a lot of property to attract digital remittance operators, starting with its decentralized technology, and some money has been invested in this market as the remittance industry is quickly shifting to digital.
"I think that the offline cash based segment still accounts for the vast majority of remittances," said Oppenheimer, "but it is shrinking and it will consolidate to digital remittance companies that provide the best customer experience".
But in fact we found that Eastern Europeans, Filipinos, and others massively over-indexed on services like VoIP and social networking, so in fact it completely makes sense to sell them digital remittance apps.
But it is still a niche service, and it is not clear yet whether similar products will ultimately offer the mass market a better option than the status quo (including newer digital-only remittance providers) on security, speed, cost and ease-of-use.
Founded in 2015, Toast offers an Android app which takes cross-border remittance digital and cuts out the fees, which can amount to as much as one month of salary over the course of a year of monthly payments.
The business was started by telecom operator PLDT, and it operates as its fintech arm, with services that include a prepaid wallet, digital payment option for retails, a remittance network for sending money, a digital lending service and a loyalty and rewards program.
The remittance market is huge and moving swiftly to digital.
