the client
Express Remit is a leading provider of financial services including international money transfer, foreign currency and other services. It operates in Europe, Canada, United Kingdom and Asia.
There are many companies that are legally permitted to offer money transfer services as they are regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). However, because they are not principal members of the FCA, they do not have their own bank accounts into which their funds can be settled.
“Express Remit is different from other high street money transfer providers because we are principal members of the FCA. This means we have our own bank account and, more importantly, we are allowed to offer PSD agents the ability to use our bank account to settle funds.”
Abdul Awan
Director, Express Remit
The CHALLENGE
The relationship between Trust Payments and Express Remit started with just three Point of Sale (POS) devices that their customer would use to pay in-branch for money transfer services. Then they came to Trust Payments with a challenge.
Being a principal member of the FCA, Express Remit can offer PSD agents the use of its bank account where their funds can be settled. But despite their regulation by the FCA, the major banks have withdrawn their support for PSD agents so finding a way to settle their funds into a bank account has become a major problem for them.
Express Remit had an established a network of trusted PSD agents that it had authorised to use its bank account, but they were looking for something special from Trust Payments.
“Our partner bank set a cut-off time for us to send international SWIFT payments,” explained Abdul Awan, Director, Express Remit. “If I hadn’t received settlement of funds from my card processor by that time, I’d lose out on a preferential FX rate and the funds would have failed to arrive next day for my customers. Some payment companies settle after a week or two days, but we wanted to receive our funds next day – and before 1pm.”
Abdul Awan
Director, Express Remit
OUR SOLUTION
Remittance is one of the sectors in which Trust Payments has built a high level of expertise.
Its dedicated Remittance team understands the nuances of the money transfer business so it can make well-informed decisions about how to support them. A critical aspect of running a remittance business is the optimisation of cashflow and the timing of processing transactions to take advantage of preferential exchange rates.
It is this specialism in the sector that meant that the underwriters at Trust Payments understood the business model of Express Remit and were able to approve the request enabling the full delivery all of their requirements including:
“Trust Payments settles my funds by 1pm the very next day, which is excellent. That makes me and my agents very happy.”
Abdul Awan
Director, Express Remit
It’s also the responsiveness of his account manager that Abdul appreciates. “Help is just an email away, it’s so good and so rapid. Things just get done.”
In addition, Trust Payments went the extra step to ensure all parties were legally protected for the future by preparing a Board Resolution document for both Express Remit and its PSD agents.
“We didn’t initially appreciate the value of this step,” said Abdul, “but it has brought clarity to our relationships. Trust Payments explained that it will help us to avoid complications in the future should we ever want to change payment processor – but Trust Payments feels like home.”
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