ACE and dLocal Team to Improve Remittances in APAC and EMEA

Payments service provider dLocal has launched a partnership with British remittances firm ACE Money Transfer.

The companies say their collaboration, announced in a news release Tuesday (Oct. 24), is designed to improve payout services across the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region and Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA).

According to the release, EMEA countries recorded $79 billion in remittances during the 2022 fiscal year, 19% higher than the prior year, while APAC countries saw just a 0.7% increase in remittances, reaching $130 billion for the year.

“Strategic collaborations between financial institutions like ACE Money Transfer and dLocal can foster significant growth in remittance inflows to these regions through streamlined, secure, fast, and convenient processes,” the companies said.

The collaboration, the release said, lets customers in the U.K., Europe, Canada, Australia and Switzerland, instantly transfer money to several corridors across APAC and EMEA using payment channels such as bank transfers and wallet payments.

Both organizations said they see the regions in question as areas for growth because of a rising demand for international remittances.

“Remittances can mean different things to each individual, for example, a lower-income household may rely on remittances to finance the purchase of consumer goods, housing, education and healthcare,” said Agustin Cerisola, head of Asia & Africa, Global Remittances at dLocal.

“For others, remittances may provide capital for entrepreneurial activities or cover business costs such as imports or debts. The key is that remittances and international payments need to be reliable and secure.”

As PYMNTS Intelligence has found, more than a quarter of small to midsized businesses (SMBs) say that the complexity of cross-border payments is a roadblock to their ability to grow (27%), while just 23% of SMBs reported that the cross-border payment solutions they use were very or extremely satisfactory.

“That leaves three-quarters of respondents noting that the solutions they have in place fall short in terms of what they need to manage their business’ cross-market flows (which would include liquidity),” PYMNTS wrote last month.

Meanwhile, a recent report by the Digital Dollar Project (DDP), suggests that central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) could help improve the remittance market.

“The pilot demonstrated that rather than displacing the service offerings of Western Union and BDO Unibank, CBDCs present an opportunity to modernize processes and promote efficiencies for private sector companies and their customers,” the DDP wrote in August.