PayPal’s Xoom, Euronet’s Ria Pair On Remittances

PayPal has increased its foothold in Eastern Europe and Africa, and has boosted its presence in the global remittance market, through a new partnership agreement.

Its Xoom service has signed a deal with Euronet Worldwide subsidiary Ria, which will offer Xoom customers cash pickup services “at more than 150,000 of Ria’s international network locations,” according to a statement. Ria’s network includes approximately 355,000 global agents. Customers using Xoom can now go online or use mobile devices to send money to 70 percent of countries around the world via this deal.

“Partnering with Ria allows us to grow our global footprint and significantly expand our services in the African diaspora and across Eastern Europe,” said Julian King, Xoom’s vice president and general manager. “With this expansion, Xoom now offers service to over 130 countries globally, including many countries that have limited access to digital remittance services.”

Xoom launched in 2001 and was purchased  by PayPal in 2015 for $890 million in an all-cash deal.

Xoom recently increased its send limits to US$25,000 per transaction for over 50 countries, including India, Canada, the United Kingdom and the Philippines. In a report published in early 2017, it was found that sending money overseas through a digital service like Xoom/PayPal costs nearly half (3.93 percent) of the average cost of traditional remittances services (7.45 percent).

The Xoom-Ria deal comes amid continuing changes to the global remittance market because of digitalization and other factors.

And other player are always trying to gain market share. For instance, earlier this year Walmart made its money transfer service global, in partnership with MoneyGram. The digital remittance market could be worth some $300 billion by 2021.

PayPal, also recently closed its deal with Synchrony, in which it acquired $7.6 billion in receivables from PayPal. With the completion of the deal, PayPal said it and Synchrony have extended their co-branded consumer credit card program agreement, making Synchrony the exclusive issuer of PayPal’s consumer financing program online in the U.S. through 2028.