Eyeing a rapidly growing demand for outbound remittances in Taiwan, a US money-transfer company announced yesterday a cross-border express remittance service to further tap into the nation's money transfer sector.
"We have seen increasing outbound money transfer demands in Taiwan, as more and more Taiwanese do business abroad and more and more foreigners come to work in Taiwan," Chris Yau (姚新元), director of Western Union Financial Services Ltd's Taiwan branch, told a media briefing yesterday.
The company estimated US$56 billion get wired out of Taiwan annually by foreign laborers and brides to destinations inclu-ding Vietnam, the Philippines and Indonesia.
With 1.5 million Taiwanese businesspeople in China, that country -- where Western Union has deployed 23,000 agents -- is the major destination for local customers' transfers, Yau said.
Western Union set up its Taiwan branch at the beginning of this year.
The company is currently in talks with a few unnamed large-scale banks with over 100 branches across the nation about expansion projects, Yau said.
"Unlike the banks' conventional outbound money-transfer services that require two to three working days [to complete], our niche is our speedy transactions that allows people [in other countries] to receive money within minutes [from Taiwan]," he said.
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