💸 Money Transfers

Welcome to Latinometrics. We bring you Latin American insights and trends through concise, thought-provoking data visualizations.

Sending Money Abroad 💡

In today’s globalized world, it’s hard to imagine turning back the clock on international payments. The world’s first wire transfer occurred in 1872—within five years nearly $2.5M was being wired each year.

Fast forward a century and a half and today the demand for speedy, cost-effective money transfers has never been so high. The average consumer in the United States, for example, has over five bank accounts, while remittances sent by immigrants to their families back home topped $800B last year.

Given all this, it’s no wonder that exciting new companies have sought to meet this demand through innovative solutions. Take Due, for example, a London-based fintech founded in 2022 which allows users to open a borderless account from anywhere. The company just made its Latin American debut by launching in Mexico, its 64th country of operation worldwide.

Due touts itself as a seamless payment solution ideal for individuals and businesses aiming to overcome traditional barriers to making payments or sending money. But we wanted to see for ourselves, so we tried out their service – as well as that of some competitors – to see where we’d get the most bang for our buck.

And what can we say? When it comes to sending either euro or US dollars, Due stays ahead of the pack.

For our test, we tried sending 10K in both currencies to a Mexican bank account to see what sort of peso results we’d get. We ran our test on the same day for six different money transfer services, and Due edged out the competition when an average of over 375 pesos was saved across both transactions.

Perhaps even more impressive was the speed: an international wire transfer generally takes between one to five business days, but our euro-to-peso transfer was instant, while our dollar-to-peso transfer took under two hours.

For those keeping score, that means Due is not just cheaper than its competition—it’s a whole lot faster, too. And the company offers transfers in both directions, meaning you can send pesos just as easily as you do dollars or euro.

Due leverages digital asset innovations to facilitate these fast, secure, and cost-effective international transfers. It bypasses traditional financial barriers by offering a digital dollar to go in and out of any currency while tying together existing payment rails like Mexico’s SPEI or Europe’s SEPA through blockchain protocols.

Over 150 years after the world’s first wire transfer, Due is helping to bridge the gap when it comes to sending money abroad. We’ll make sure to keep an eye on its spread across Latin America.

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