Alliance Disrupts Remittance Market By Upgrading Its Epay Mastercard

As global money transfer services improve, Alliance Financial Services is introducing an upgrade to its ePay MasterCard. This will allow Jamaicans to receive remittances directly to the card without ever visiting a physical remittance location. Before now, consumers primarily used the card for shopping.

The move comes ahead of Alliance’s expected initial public offer (IPO).  The IPO was initially expected sometime this year, but the pandemic has delayed several planned offers.

The company’s new ePay Mastercard is being called the game changing “direct-to-card” product. But Alliance wasn’t the first to come up with the idea. Moneygram offers a similar service, which the company calls its digital channel.

“Since we have the technology and we have the platform and we’re a principal member of Mastercard, we felt that we could build a simpler or adopt a similar approach to what Moneygram is doing,” said Robert Chin, Deputy Chairman and Vice President of Alliance Financial in an interview with Kalilah Reynolds Media.

He says there’s really no shame in the game and here’s why.  A quick scan of remittance agencies, whether locally or regionally, reveals that everyone is looking to eliminate the hustle and bustle of sending and receiving remittances by going digital. Since the company rolled out the additional remittance service in April, things have been off to a good start.

“We have seen a significant take up. We have done quite a bit, in excess of US$125M so far in the direct to card and we feel we are in a position where we can now launch the product fully to the market,” explained Chin.

But Alliance Financial didn’t get here overnight. After receiving approval from the BOJ under the Electronic Retail Payment Systems Regulations in 2014, Alliance Payment Services – a related financial technology company – began issuing ePay prepaid cards. In 2017, Alliance became a principal member of the MasterCard network. This allowed the company to enhance its card offering by issuing prepaid ePay MasterCards that allowed more access to buying opportunities via the vast MasterCard network. 

In February, BOJ replaced the Electronic Retail Payment Services Guidelines with the Fintech Regulatory Sandbox Guidelines, which allows Alliance to use even greater agility and innovation in product development and service delivery. 

As a result, the MasterCard principal license was transferred to Alliance Financial on June 18. Effective October 1, Alliance Financial acquired the card services portfolio of Alliance Payment Services as required by the BOJ. This allowed the Company to engage in co-branding opportunities.

“We have several co-branding arrangements already in place with some large corporate entities… I won’t mention those yet because they are not concretized but we have a bunch of exciting things that will help pilot us through this pandemic,” said Chin.

At the outset, the Company is growing its customer base with the new offering, but the biggest winner may be underserved, unbanked and underbanked Jamaicans. 

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