Nigeria’s remittance API has been launched by VTNetwork Limited. The API streamlines and squeezes efficiencies in the final mile of remittances flowing into that country.
Report showed that Nigeria received a total of $21 billion from its citizens living abroad as home-bound remittances in 2014, according to the World Bank, and the services are expensive. Nigerians, like the rest of their sub-Saharan neighbors, pay the highest fees globally on remittances.
According to the World Bank, as much as $100 billion in migrant savings could be raised annually by developing countries by reducing remittance costs and agent recruitment costs, and mobilizing diaspora savings and philanthropic contributions from migrants.
VTNetwork Limited, with its mobile payments brand VCASH, now addresses and capitalizes on this problem. The just-launched API is a global first and tackles remittance costs head-on with the release of a unified API to allow inward remittance and seamless distribution to recipients in Nigeria.
The API will allow international money transfer organizations to transfer funds directly to Nigerians on their mobile wallets and into bank accounts.
The API will enable remittance companies to take money electronically from senders globally and channel these funds directly into a recipient’s mobile wallet or bank account in Nigeria. VCASH takes care of the last mile distribution by notifying the recipients via email and SMS in real-time.
Peter Ojo, CEO of VTNetwork Limited said, “It is our hope that this solution will end the long arduous task of creating remittance agents network in a country of 180 million people, thereby encouraging Nigerians in the diaspora to send smaller amounts, as low as $20, to their loved ones without worrying about the cost of delivery.”
