Sentbe Begins

Sentbe, found and incorporated in 2015, Korea and in 2019, Singapore, started with providing B2C remittance service for migrant workers which banks have not valued in Korea. For them, remittance service by banks have been perceived as expensive, complicated, and time-consuming. Since the Korean regulatory environment had allowed only banks to carry out remittance, banks had been reluctant to innovate remittance in more efficient and convenient ways, solely enjoying their dominant position in the market.

As a result, migrant workers who are highly motivated by higher income abroad than their home and sending as much as they earn and save to family were turned out on the black market: for instance, IOM (International Organization for Migration) found that 81% of Nepali workers in Korea used informal remittance channels.

The advent of fintech stimulated policy makers opening remittance market to non-bank financial institutions. As a result, Sentbe's remittance solution which is cheaper, simpler and faster than banks’ service was brought to the industry. The company successfully attracted migrant workers users by making them dispel the perception that remittance is expensive and non-transparent.

Sentbe has already an impressive record: so far it has carried out 527,244 transactions amounting to $ 352 million as of October 2019, by lowering the fees from 5~8% of banks to 0.5~2% of remitted amount, it has helped users save approximately at least $ 10 million or $ 22 million at maximum.

While having focused on migrant workers in B2C remittance service market, Sentbe has completed its foundation work to penetrate into B2B remittance and payment industry with the basis of its business infrastructure featured with FX risk management capacity, FX hub based both in Korea and Singapore with respective remittance license, and global partnership with global partners such as Moneygram, Samsung Pay, and Ripple Xcurrent, etc.

#remittance #fintech