"Any time we can get something donated, it's one less expense our families need to dig into their pockets for," Tzul said. "It means they can start saving the little bit of money they have to pay for something else, like a car, which is often seen as a gateway toward stable employment."It's also money they can send back home, where family members and friends are often struggling in war-torn countries. That's where SendWave and other apps come in. Like economic immigrants who come looking for a better life, refugees and asylum seekers lucky enough to make it to the US are expected to help pay for daily life -- food, housing and health care -- for those they left behind.
The World Bank estimates immigrants will send more than $601 billion home in 2016, with developing countries receiving more than $440 billion of that, ravenclaw iphone case That's nearly three times the amount of foreign aid delivered to developing countries, Most of these payments are made via wire transfers, which often require a transaction fee between 5 percent and 10 percent, Increasingly apps, which cut out the middlemen at local transfer offices, are being used, These apps have significantly lower fees -- sometimes less than 1 percent-- and they're catching on..
Juniper found in its study that the use of smaller "pure-play" digital providers, like SendWave, Xoom and WorldRemit, will grow in the next two years as immigrants get more comfortable using these services. WorldRemit, for instance, was created specifically with immigrants in mind. Company founder Ismail Ahmed first saw the opportunity to improve money transfers while studying at a university in London. Every time he sent money home to Africa, he had to travel across the city to an agent who charged a small fortune in fees. Through WorldRemit's app and website, people can make transfers online for a fraction of the price of traditional wire services.
"Previously dominated by Western Union and MoneyGram, the international mobile money transfer is becoming increasingly competitive with these new mobile remittance providers offering markedly lower prices than the established players," said Nitin Bhas, author of Juniper's report, SendWave, the app used by Church World Service's Mohamed, was developed for Kenya and other East African countries, Unlike other money transfer services, it doesn't charge ravenclaw iphone case transfer fees, just exchange rate fees, because its process is automated..
The company, which didn't respond to requests for comment, says on its website it can save customers as much as $9 for every $100 sent. Without SendWave, many would send money through a hawala system, a network of money transfer agents commonly used in East Africa and the Middle East. A hawala agent is paid a small amount -- transactions cost less than 5 percent and are often as low as 1 percent -- to transfer money to another person. The agent, in turn, contracts with another agent to deliver the funds.
