How have remittance revenues and flows changed regionally over the past decade?

We compared Western Union’s regional revenue split to the World Bank’s outbound remittance flows for 2012 to 2019, the latest year the World Bank outbound data is available for. It’s clear North America and Europe have significantly driven revenue – this makes sense as they house the majority of remittance senders. Also notable is how much Latin and Central America varies between the charts, representing a strong market for Western Union but just a small fraction of flows on the World Bank chart. 

It’s also worth mentioning that Western Union adjusted how it defined its markets, and changed how it included its digital business, between 2016 and 2017, causing the change in region share at this point. 

As digital becomes an ever-increasing share of Western Union’s business and with partnerships in regions such as in the Middle East with stc pay, it will be interesting to see how this mix develops over the next ten years.

How do the leading remittance players compare on capabilities and pricing?

James McKee

James McKee is a Data Product Manager at FXC Intelligence. He is fascinated with the international payments market and has a desire to understand what makes it tick. James utilises a range of analysis techniques to develop FXC dashboards and other analytical tools to help clients better understand the drivers of business and pricing. James completed a Master’s degree in physics from the University of Oxford.