ABOUT CASHCULUS

DESCRIPTION OF CASHCULUS

 

CASHCULUS offers consumers a handy tool for computing and comparing the instantaneous equivalent values that various RSPs offer for a given remittance amount to a given country. The recipient amounts are ranked in increasing order of magnitude to help the consumer choose the best offer at a glance.

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The World Bank is concerned that African immigrants individually, cumulatively, and collectively leave a chunk of their money in the developed world because of their choice of expensive remittance service providers (RSPs).

The cost to consumers of remittance services to Africa is generally expensive. For sub-Saharan Africa for instance, remittances cost an average of 8.2% in 2020 Q4 and 8.47% in 2021 Q3.

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The major factor leading to high remittance prices is a lack of transparency in the market. It is difficult for consumers to compare RSPs because of the continuously changing rates, and the complexity in the functions for computing the Amount Received per each transaction. This lack of transparency in the market has had the impact of reducing competition, as consumers tend to continue to patronize traditional market players because they cannot compare the services, fees, and efficiency of their favorite RSP against other providers.

Any reduction in remittance transfer price would result in more money remaining in the pockets of migrants and their families and would have a significant effect on the income levels of recipient families.

 

HOW TO USE CASHCULUS?

• Enter the remittance amount and currency of the money to send

• Specify the recipient country

• Press the ‘Calculate’ button

That’s all! CASHCULUS does the rest of the work to ensure that the best deal for the consumer is just a touch or click away.  This frees consumers from having to memorize, bookmark, or save an RSP’s information because CASHCULUS maintains all the details.

 

WHY THE FOCUS ON AFRICA?

Africa has some 54 countries, and many of them depend on remittances from the diaspora to support the local economies. However, the world’s highest remittance costs are to areas in Africa, and these costs translate to income losses for the local economies. The accumulated yearly values of these losses are typically staggering (in the order of several billion dollars annually and increasing, according to the World Bank), so there is the need to reduce the losses and help these countries derive maximum value from their inbound remittances.

 

WHO BENEFITS FROM CASHCULUS?

• Consumers, because CASHCULUS assembles all credible RSPs and makes it very easy to both find and compare RSPs.

 

• All credible RSPs, because they no longer must spend buckets of money trying to be heard above the din of the non-performing RSPs. Correspondingly, the highest charging SPs will fall by the wayside.

 

• Africans in the diaspora, because CASHCULUS enables them to leave the least amount of their hard-earned cash on the table. CASHCULUS guarantees that this cash-on-the-table, a.k.a. table-cash, is as small as possible.

 

• African countries, because the table-cash that is rightfully earned by their hard-working nationals in the diaspora are sent home for nation building. Citizens should never discount the cumulative impact of the table-cash. Responsible governments should rally the people to understand that the small table-cash that they normally forgo for the sake of familiarity and convenience are vital to the economy. Since 2015, remittances as a share of GDP to many African countries have been falling, due to inefficiencies. CASHCULUS can help rectify this anomaly.

 

• The World Bank, because it looks at the table cash at the macro level. It has campaigned vigorously against the practice of leaving such large amounts of cash in the developed countries. According to the World Bank, the cumulative table cash goes to Africa as loans and other finance products and instruments, and this is a situation they are eager to see curbed.