Sentbe & Financial Inclusion

The value, driving Sentbe and embodied in its mission statement, is to constantly question traditions in finance and find innovative solutions to inspire the world. Under the mission, Sentbe believes to create an impact in financial inclusion for the underserved by the existing dominant players.

Sentbe's Mission Statement

The mission statement embraces inter-linkages between Sentbe's business and its impact on financial inclusion. Sentbe views the conventional financial system and its main players, notably banks, have been less addressing marginalized customer groups in diverse areas of financial service. Sentbe sees that fintechs can contribute to improving financial inclusion for those who have been for long underserved by the traditional landscape of finance. With its expertise, Sentbe focuses on creating a positive impact in the fields of cross-border money transfer and forex risk management for migrants and micro-, small-, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) in trade.

When Sentbe launched its remittance service in 2016 in parallel with the changing regulatory environment which begins to allow non-banks to conduct cross-border money transfer business, its expected major customers were Korean parents having children studying abroad but the reaction was spurred from migrant workers in Korea. This made Sentbe seize the opportunity where there seem to be unmet market demands derived from the migrants. They perceived banks' remittance service as expensive, complicated, and time-consuming. As a result, migrant workers who are highly motivated by higher-income abroad than their home and send money as much as they earn and save to family were turned out on the black market: a study found that 81% of Nepali workers in Korea rely on informal remittance.

Migrant worker using Sentbe (Click to see the Video.)

With this recognition, Sentbe started in earnest with remittance service for migrant workers which Korean banks have not considered as valued customers. Sentbe introduced a cheaper, simpler and faster remittance solution than banks have done and successfully attracted the migrant customers, making them dispel the perception that remittance is expensive and non-transparent.

People waiting at a bank

Sentbe has already an impressive record: so far it has carried out 543,990 transactions amounting to USD 367 million, by lowering the fees from 5~8% of banks to 0.5~2% of the remitted amount, it has helped users increase disposable income and send their hard-earn money more to home by saving USD 27 million at maximum.

The payment volume of Korean export-import enterprises amounts to more than USD 1.37 trillion as of 2018. Of them, the trade in goods of USD 406 billion was carried out by small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Looking into the trade in services, its volume appears to be USD 228 billion mostly generated by relatively smaller-sized companies compared to trade in goods.

SMEs in trade widely use bank or payment solution like Paypal in doing their business with their trade partners abroad. Their experience in using such remittance and cross-border payment is revealed that fee is expensive and procedure is inefficient. Moreover, they are unguardedly exposed to forex risk incurred by currency volatility. However, no financial services to address these pain points are introduced to them.

MSMEs experiencing multiple pain points in cross-border remittance and/or payment

In response to such situation, Sentbe is to solve financial exclusion for export and import SMEs. The fact that MSMEs in trade bear the expensive cost and are vulnerable to forex risk management ignited Sentbe to seize business opportunities. With Sentbe’s B2B service, its first target SMEs can cut payment costs by 70% and eliminate potential loss of USD 6.4 billion incurred by currency volatility.