The global remittance business according to the IMF is $600 Billion annually. That is huge, but 98% of those Peer-to-Peer transactions represented are over $100.
So when you break down P2P transactions to a local country metric, 99% of those transactions are under $100. There are exceptions of course. In the Philippines, the local remittance business is 2-3 times the size of the global inward remittance, due to the nature of migrant
workers who send money home from cities like Manila back to their remote villages. Back on point, there is a small percentage of transactions that exceed $100 within local markets. This is quite easy to comprehend. Living in a developed part of the world, how many if any of daily transactions are over $100? From your coffees, to your taxi / bus ride to work, to your lunch, your movie tickets, or a post work drink.
With 99% of transactions under $100, most of the world of small-value transactions are islands onto themselves. Could you transact financially across borders as instantly and seamlessly as you could transact data and content? Why can you not send someone 50 cents or a dollar for your grandma’s amazing pasta recipe? Or if you have a calculus question that needs solving, why can’t someone give you that quick answer and receive 10c for it?
The use cases for small-value transfers between people at a global scale is still unknown. It is an untapped, rich ecosystem whose potential will only be fully realised when the underlying payment rails to execute those kinds of transactions are in place. The need for a mobile-first, regulatory and hyper-local integration framework is what has been missing all along. Once a payment platform for small-value transfers is in place, that can serve this requirement with little friction and low cost, the digital economy as we know it today will evolve into the mainstream economy of tomorrow.A
