Irish start-up, Pipit Global has built a B2B platform for banks in Emerging Markets to accept cash lodgements from their countries diaspora. 

Announcing the new service,  Pipit CoFounder and CEO Ollie Walsh explained: "When someone moves to another country, it can be difficult to open a local bank account, meaning migrants often have no choice but to use expensive cash transfer services like Western Union to send money home."

"From the UK it can cost 9.5% of the transaction to get cash back to their family.  By integrating the Pipit platform, banks in Emerging Markets can accept cash payments from the UK and across Europe from their account holders, meaning migrants can lodge cash directly into their bank account at home at a significantly lower cost than sending cash."

Pipit have been building up this model bank-by-bank with direct sales and direct integration processes.

Now, however, Pipit has launched on Finastra’s ‘Fusion Fabric’ cloud platform which enables any bank that uses Finastra as their core banking provider to integrate Pipit directly via their existing banking platform. This dramatically reduces technical integration time and costs for the bank.

"Finastra is one of the world’s leading banking platforms,’" says Walsh.  "And being part of their cutting edge ecosystem will really accelerate Pipit’s growth. What is most important to Pipit, as a Social Impact Fintech, is working with Finastra will dramatically scale our reach to banks in Emerging Markets and therefore the number of people we can help and the Impact we can make."

"The average remittance from the UK to Africa is £300 a month.  To lodge that cash directly to a bank account at home with Pipit is around £13.50 cheaper than sending the cash home using a traditional cash remittance service.  That £13.50 a month makes a big difference on the ground to a family in an Emerging Market."

Among the benefits for banks and their customers is that by lodging the cash directly to an account customers can build up a credit profile, which means that customers can avail of a wider range of banking services.

The user experience is very easy and intuitive. The bank customer simply logs on to their online bank or app as normal, and selects the option to lodge cash to their account. Within the banking app, a barcode is generated which the customer brings to a Pipit cash collection partner, which in the UK is PayPoint. Once the barcode is scanned and the cash paid, their account is topped up in its local currency. The customer only deals with their own bank, they don’t have a Pipit account or a Pipit app.

Any Finastra client banks interested in including Pipit in their banking services can contact their account manager at Finastra or Pipit directly.