British-Polish fintech SPOKO (which means means ok/cool in Polish) has announced it’s entering the UK market to target South East Asian migrant workers looking to transfer money and is actively seeking UK telecoms partners.
SPOKO’s app provides instant international money transfers without the need for bank accounts and costly transfer payments. It supports a mixture of online and offline money transfer methods, providing transfer in local currency via a mobile, bank account or point-of-sale outlet. In contrast to rivals, it says it offers a more extensive payment infrastructure that supports many different local payment methods. For example, in India, customers can pick up money in cash or by transfer to a bank account; in Ukraine, by card; in Nigeria, by topping up your phone. It’s currently available in Europe and the UK and enables transfers to 16 countries with plans to expand this list to 51 countries, enabling money transfers to 86 countries.
The offer for telecoms firms is simple: SPOKO provides an open API to its partners, giving them the ability to quickly roll out white label transfer services. It’s already working with two of the Ukraine’s largest banks – PrivatBank and Alfa Bank – and has carried out several integrations with international partners such as the British fintech Trust Payments and Orange Poland.
“We have a great understanding of our users’ expectations, their habits, and which form of money transfer is most convenient for their needs,” explains Evgeny Chamtonau, CEO of SPOKO. “From the very beginning we focused on local markets. We started by developing a service for Ukrainians working in Poland, under the PayUkraine brand, and recently passed the 120,000 user milestone”. Chamtonau goes on to say that his company now wants to target people of South East Asian heritage in the UK, as well as migrant workers, who frequently send money home.
Demand for this type of service has actually increased during the coronavirus pandemic according to co-founder Aliaksandr Horlach. He says many banks and telecoms firm have frozen development projects during the crisis, while acknowledging that customer demand for such services has increased. Instead, they’ve turned to SPOKO’s ready-made solution to reduce time-to-market. “It’s been a very active time for us!” Horlach says.
The result is that SPOKO services are now available in an expanded range of countries including Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Belarus, Brazil, Georgia, India, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Nigeria, Pakistan, Russia, Ukraine and Uzbekistan, and now the UK.
Omnisperience’s view
SPOKO addresses the needs of the 1.7 billion adults who do not have access to bank accounts, but often do have a mobile phone. It is cleverly targetting diaspora communities with these services, with a high level of localisation – understanding their specific needs and the realities of life in the countries it enables transfers to and from. Its offer to telecoms firms is simple: to provide a proven, value-adding, own-brand money transfer service to their customers quickly. This enables them to not only meet their customers’ needs but also to create a vital new revenue stream for themselves. This is not virgin territory: such services already exist. But SPOKO claims its app is easier and more functional. For those interested in rolling out such a service, it’s worth a look.