Santander’s PagoFX launches international money transfer app in Belgium
The banks are going for a technological approach to onboard retail customers to deliverable FX platforms. The electronic trading sector could easily do the same and court new clients in the process
Deliverable FX, something that only a handful of FX trading companies have embraced, is very much the focus of major banks at the moment.
PagoFX, the international money transfer app from Santander, has gone live in Belgium, marking its first expansion since launching in the UK in April.
Billed as a direct rival to fintech unicorn TransferWise, PagoFX allows users with a debit card issued by any bank or financial institution to send money abroad using just their smartphone.
From today, Belgian residents can sign up for an account once they’ve downloaded the app. In minutes, after a quick verification process, they can send their first international money transfer to 42 different countries.
Cedric Menager, CEO at PagoFX, says: “It’s no coincidence we’ve chosen Belgium as the first country for our international expansion: Belgium is the crossroads of many nationalities, many different cultures and many people with clear needs to make international payments with transparency and low-costs.”
PagoFX charges a fixed fee of 0.8% of the transaction and promises delivery by the next day providing the transfer – calculated at the real-time mid-market exchange rate – is authorised by 8pm GMT the night before.
As an added incentive. first-time PagoFX customers can send up to £1,000 with no fees under a bonus programme which runs until 15 January 2021.
FinanceFeeds has looked at deliverable FX as a viable extra service which can be offered by FX brokerages and liquidity providers.
Four years ago, we spoke to Sucden Financial about its deliverable FX business, which is operated from London as a separate division to its eFX unit.
Sucden Financial is well established in FX and has supplied deliverable/physical foreign exchange for over 30 years. Our clients include money service businesses (MSBs)/commercial FX providers, who in turn deal with companies and individuals wishing to exchange foreign currency.
The market has historically been dominated by a small number of large banks. We identified a gap and over the last few years have increased our efforts to capture a greater market share. Sucden Financial is not a bank and does not compete with retail providers. The technological advances of FinTec payment providers mean we are a strong fit to assist with these firms, especially in their initial growth stages.
At the time, Sucden Financial told us “We assist money service businesses by being able to provide an all-round service, with pricing from multiple participants. This is accessed via our online trading platform or API, where a client effectively plugs in their own trading system to our infrastructure.
“Our deliverable FX offering is designed to make it as simple as possible for our clients, from the moment clients execute a trade online or over the phone, up to when we transfer funds back to our clients and we offer an all-round service for FX money service businesses with same day payments, forward lines for up to two years and provide the option to drawdown when required. said Sucden Financial’s Andy Fox.
“Our clients are assigned their own account manager. This personal touch helps us to fully understand their needs and requirements to ensure they take full advantage of Sucden Financial’s wide range of capabilities” he said.
There is no doubt that the non-bank FX industry can make significant inroads into the market which is currently being expanded by the banks, and in doing so capture a high quality client base that brokers can cross-sell to, eventually onboarding them as trading customers, and in expanding the deliverable aspect of FX, reduce exposure as there is no leverage.
