MoneyGram’s Senior Regional Director, UK & Ireland Marc Matthews reveals the company’s offering to the African communities in the UK in an encounter with African Voice Editor in Chief, Mike Abiola
How long have you been with MoneyGram?
I’ve been with MoneyGram for over 6 years now, senior regional director for 3 years. Leading the strategy and the direction of the region in putting the plans together for each year ensuring that we hit those, leading and working with the senior team effectively and running it on a day to day basis.
So you have hands on experience?
Yes, I certainly do, I started in business development 6 years ago and worked my way up. Took over the region 3 years ago.
How has the African market been for MoneyGram?
It’s a significant part of what we do when you put all the countries together. There are obviously those that we focus more time and attention on than others that are the key ones for us. There are some we are growing not as well as we would like and there are some that present a challenge to us each month. We are still trying to understand why that is and what the trend is. The countries that we are looking at are South Africa, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya, Ivory Coast, Tanzania, and Uganda. There are a lot of new things happening for us in Africa as well that will allow us to look at ways of improving the services we offer our customers in their countries. Africa as you know is a huge place and there are different countries in Africa with their own different needs. Some of them are similar in characteristics, but they are all different.
What are you doing differently, say in Nigeria and Zimbabwe?
With Nigeria, we are looking at the trust element of our product surrounding security, reliability, 10 minute service. So knowing that your money is going to get there in that 10 minutes time window and that the banks we work with have always got the funds to be able to pay out so people don’t have to travel any distance to pick up the money when they know the money has arrived they can rest assured that the money will be ready for pick up. It’s a trust and a speed service from MoneyGram, from the UK, a trusted brand like the Post Office, Thomas Cook and then trusted brands in Nigeria here like Skye bank, UBA and others that we work with. Our fees are very competitive, we have a competitive FX rate as well. We work very much on these message of security, trust and reliability in Nigeria.
For Zimbabwe, Zimbabwe is changing a lot. We just recently launched two different products in Zimbabwe. We are attacking Zimbabwe from a different angle now. So up until a couple of weeks ago we just had our traditional ten minute product to Zimbabwe. We completed a big upgrade to the post office and we launched two new products with them and with all our other agents on the back of it as well.
Alongside the 10 minute send to Zimbabwe, we now offer a cheaper priced overnight send. A 24 hour send which is only £2.50. It’s a slower service but it’s cheaper as not everybody needs the money to get there in 10 minutes. We felt that that was a market that we were misrepresented in and we’ve launched this new service to look at how we can serve the Zimbabwean community better in the UK in that respect.
From a technology point of view we’ve just launched the echo cash mobile wallets in Zimbabwe. So you can send from any location in the UK or online and you can send it just by adding the telephone number, the mobile phone number. You can send it directly to an echo cash mobile wallet.
We’ve gone from having one product to having three products. Literally in the last couple of weeks. The echo cash is launched with the £2.50 price point as well. So good pricing, good effects and 3 different ways of sending and receive money to Zimbabwe.
Technology is the key drive to Africa, so all those products, the echo cash wallet, the third that we launched on top of Kenya, Tanzania and we have plans for next year to launch a whole range of mobile wallets to countries like Uganda and South Africa. Technology is advancing and Nigeria we will add bank account, so we will be able to send money to any bank account in Nigeria by next year as well. It’s a fast pace and evolving market and we will need to look at how we segment our customer base and how we work with different agents in different community groups. The idea is whether you want to send in cash or whether you want to send online from the UK, by MoneyGram online, in person or by echo mobile wallet. The idea is we can meet consumer needs right across all the way over Africa.
Are there variation in prices when you send money online or through the post office?
Yes, there is a different pricing online and in the walk in Thomas cook, post office and Tesco. Both are very competitive versus our competitors in both cases. But because the online space is still relatively new, you have a lot of markets disrupters coming in to that space. The fees on the MGO do tend to be cheaper on the opening bands than in the walk in world. That’s just market forces that dictate the prices.
So it’s safe to say that your money arrives in any location in Africa in Ten minutes. Whether West Africa, South Africa.?
That’s right.
Who are your main agents in West Africa?
We work with all the big banks, the likes of United Bank for Africa (UBA) across Africa, we work the likes of SKYE bank and First bank in Nigeria. In Ghana, we work with Commercial Bank, we have very good relationship with standard bank and First national bank in South Africa, Kingdom Bank in Zimbabwe. Where you see MoneyGram it’s a big brand and we are very much a partnership. You send from trusted brands like Tesco, the post office and Thomas cook from here in the UK and then we pick up with world recognised brands like UBA and Ghana Commercial banks, Skye bank in Nigeria, First bank, Standard Bank e.t.c across Africa. They are the brands you trust and we know that they are the brands who have the funds to supply demand within 10minutes when the receiver comes in to pick up their money. There is nothing worse than for someone to have to travel maybe 20/30 miles just to pick up some money and then get there and the agent does not have any available funds.
Do customers collect in Dollars, pounds or if you want it in local currency, do you have those 3 variations?
There are different variations across different countries. If we look at Nigeria as an example, we use to pay out in Naira and in Dollars until Nigerian Central Bank said you can no longer pay out in Dollars, you have to pay out in Naira. So we had the ability to do both and we were quite comfortable doing both. Obviously we have to comply with regulations. In Zimbabwe, we pay out in US dollars, we don’t pay out in Zimbabwean dollars, market forces again. South Africa is interesting in as much as everybody has to pay out in US dollars still and then locally it is converted into Rand. We are in the process of looking at our license in South Africa which will allow us to then be able to have Rand to pay out. Where we are able to, we generally have multiple currency pay outs across African countries. Where regulations dictate then we will comply one hundred percent with what regulations say.
It’s been interesting what MoneyGram has done with Nigerian partnership or with UBA over the years. I would like you to elaborate on your Corporate Social Responsibility, how far have you taken that in Nigeria?
We have the MoneyGram foundation which we run from our core HQ in Dallas, but effectively what we are looking at doing is getting involved in projects within countries that we can look into helping local communities, we were involved earlier this year with a project in Nigeria where we were supplying laptops to schools where they don’t necessarily have that ability themselves to provide that. We work with partners globally to put together packages and deals where we can work with local communities in the country to help people. Creating fresh water wells to projects outside in places like Ghana and more rural areas. MoneyGram foundation has its own website with all the projects we’ve worked on. It is MoneyGram’s policy as a money transfer provider to these countries to keep putting money back into communities in whatever capacity we can.
