Azimo makes most of its transactions across Europe, targeting migrant workers who send money mostly to family back home, techcrunch.com reports. The endpoints that Azimo serves span 190 countries and 80 currencies, and 500 million people have transferred money through its app since it was founded in 2012.
While Azimo is already offering services into the Philippines and Thailand, Asia is an important step for the company as there are some 60 million migrants from the region with USD 250 billion transferred annually. Today, some 75% of that activity is done offline with banks or money transfer operators like Western Union. Azimo hopes to offer transaction fees below 2%, compared to offline rivals that charge between 5% and 8%.
Rakuten stores payment details and other data about its customers and, as it considers ways of developing its business, financial services could be one way of doing that.
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